Wake County school board doesn't make additional changes to student assignment plan

During today's student assignment work session, the Wake County school board decided not to make any additional changes to the 2013-14 plan.

This also means the board will leave, as is, these selection priorities for the newly created first transfer period that were recommended by staff. This includes leaving as the seventh priority requests from rising 6th- and ninth-graders to get the feeder from the choice plan.

It wasn't moved up because board members and staff raised concerns about capacity issues and of the impact of bumping it ahead of the calendar match priorities.

Staff also explained that priority one for rising K, 6th- and 9th-graders wanting as their first choice the same school as an older sibling will have an extremely high numerical value that will guarantee these requests are approved.

The other priorities will have a lower numerical value assigned to them with students getting more points if they fall under more than one priority. But even if a person has multiple of the lower priorities, it wouldn't be enough to have more points than priority one.

UPDATE

The board voted 5-4 to approve the assignment plan. It went along party lines with Democrats voting yes and Republcians voting no.

But all the Republicans, except Deborah Prickett, crossed party lines to waive board policy so that the enrollment caps could be implemented immedidately.