Direct Education Scheduler

RALEIGH — Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata said today he plans to present a long-term student assignment plan to the school board for approval by late spring.

School board members voted today to authorize Tata to develop a long-term plan, including looking at the controlled-choice model presented Friday by business and community leaders. Tata, who had asked for the authority, said staff will work to develop a plan that will serve Wake for the next decade.

“This is a proud school district and this plan needs to stand the test of time and serve our students well into the 21st century,Tata said.

Wakes student assignment fight has been intense for the past 15 months with the board and community split over the use of neighborhood schools and diversity in student assignments.

But a potential turning point came Friday when the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and the Wake Education Partnership presented a model theyre asking the school board to consider.

Instead of being assigned to a specific school based on their addresses, families would rank where they’d want to go from a list of school choices, with priority being given if they want to attend their closest school. Efforts would be made to prevent schools from having too many low-performing students.

The plan would allow more students to attend schools closer to where they live while providing diversity through the use of student achievement as a factor in student assignments.

The proposal has drawn immediate interest from both Republican and Democratic school board members who say it could be a good starting point for a new plan that would begin in the 2012-13 school year.

School board member John Tedesco called today for the disbanding of his student assignment committee and the forwarding the chamber proposal to staff. Other board members quickly agreed as part of a general vote to have Tata develop a new comprehensive model.

Tata said he was impressed by Fridays proposal from business and community leaders.

It seems to have a lot of community support, Tata said of the chamber plan. It could be a good foundation.”

Tata said a task force of school personnel will also look at other ideas, such as the current model now being used, the zone model that Tedesco had been working on and other proposals from the community.

At the request of school board member Kevin Hill, Tata said it would be reasonable to provide the school board with regular updates on the task force’s work.

Also today, the school board agreed to the final changes to the 2011-12 student reassignment plan that will result in more than 3,600 students changing schools this fall.

The board had voted Feb. 1 to move around 3,500 students to different schools. A final group of 136 students who were added late to the plan got approved after a public hearing today.

Among the moves approved today was to send 15 students from school board member John Tedesco’s neighborhood from Creech Road Elementary to Aversboro Elementary. While the move means Tedesco’s neighbors will have a closer commute, critics accused him of trying to send the area to a lower poverty school.

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