This year's student reassignment plan had a clear impact on the latest magnet application results.

The school board had made a deliberate effort this year to increase magnet seats at Brooks, Combs, Douglas and Farmington Woods elementary schools by moving base kids out. All four schools saw more magnet students accepted as a result.

The number of students accepted, compared to last year, jumped from 31 to 96 at Brooks, 60 to 119 at Combs, 43 to 79 at Douglas and from 87 up to 154 at Farmington Woods.

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This could be one of those marathon-like school board meeting days.

The work session is starting two hours earlier at 11 a.m. so that the board can go over the budget proposal. We'll see how much the school board adds to Superintendent Del Burns' proposal for a $35 million funding increase from county commissioners.

Will the school board add in funding requests for extra AG services, foreign language teachers at elementary schools, gang prevention, etc?

Also during the work session, school administrators will review the process that will be used to evaluate magnet schools this year. This will pave the way for this year's round of magnetization and demagnetization talks.

The work session, as always, will be held in the board conference room at 3600 Wake Forest Road in Raleigh.

Here’s the rundown on this year’s magnet/calendar applicants.

There were 2,329 traditional-calendar requests this year, up from 1,529 last year. Like last year, school administrators say they’ll be able to place all 2,329 applicants.

But magnet applications were down with 9,100 this year, compared to 9,347 last year. Administrators say it may be due to the fact that parents couldn’t apply to four schools that are losing their magnet program.

Administrators say they’ve placed 41 percent of the magnet applicants so far, compared to 42 percent last year.

Year-round applications were up with 3,773 this year, compared to 3,395 last year. The acceptance rate is also up. It’s 48 percent this year, compared to 37 percent last year.

Overall, there were 15,219 applications. It drops to 13,500 once you eliminate duplicates.

Last year there were 14,925 total applications from 12,365 different people.

At least one astute blog observer noted that the budget proposal includes funding for three new magnet schools over the next couple of years.

The plan calls for adding $121,016 for the 2008-09 fiscal year to do staff training at two magnet schools. The magnet program would be fully implemented in 2009-10.

At the third new magnet school, staff would do planning in 2009-10 with implementation the next year.

David Ansbacher, senior director for magnet programs, said no determination has been made which, if any, schools would get magnet status. He said the funding is being included in the budget proposal to give the school board the flexibility to add the programs.

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It looks like demand is up for traditional-calendar schools this year, but it can't be conclusively said for certain yet.

As noted in today’s article, Wake had received 1,736 traditional-calendar applications as of Monday with five more days to go to file. The district received 1,519 last year.

The tricky part of determining this year’s count is that it includes people who may have filed multiple applications. For instance, a person could have submitted an application for a magnet school and traditional-calendar school and then filed another one after making changes. They’d be double counted in the 1,736 figure until they strip out the number of unique applicants.

The same proviso applies to the number of year-round and magnet applicants. As of Monday, there were 7,393 magnet applicants and 3,070 year-round applicants.

Counting all three categories, there have been 10,784 applications so far.

Last year there were 12,968 unique applications, of which 9,773 were magnets and 3,817 were year-rounds.

Click here to apply.

Click here for the selection criteria. Click here for a post explaining the differences from last year’s criteria.

School administrators have finalized the criteria that they’ll use to fill magnet schools, year-round schools and traditional-calendar schools.

Most of the criteria are the same as what was used last year. There are a few differences. Most of the changes were mandated by the school board. Some of the others weren’t expected.

For elementary magnet applicants, base and magnet students from Forestville, Lincoln Heights, Olds and Root elementary schools will get top priority. Those are the application magnet schools whose programs are being phased out by the board. A fifth school whose losing its program, Wake Forest Elementary, isn’t included because it's an equity magnet with no applicants.

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Have you submitted your magnet or calendar application yet?

The application was supposed to have gone live online at 12:01 a.m. Whether filing that quickly helps your chances was one of the questions that was answered in an article in today’s newspaper.

Here were the results of the magnet applications last year.

Here were the results for the year-round applications.

School officials say they accepted all the traditonal-calendar applicants lat year. Things could change if the demand shoots up.

The selection criteria that will be used this year is still being finalized. But barring any major changes, it will be like the criteria that was used last year.

UPDATE
Click here for the magnet/calendar application.

School officials say a glitch that prevented some people from applying today should be fixed by tomorrow.

School board member Ron Margiotta was undaunted by his failure to amend the reassignment plan to open the new schools on a traditional calendar.

Margiotta came right back with a second motion, which was also treated as an unfriendly amendment. He wanted to extend grandfathering to all grades for base students being reassigned out of magnet schools.

Parents from Brooks and Farmington Woods elementary schools had lobbied for this expanded grandfathering on Tuesday. It was their attempt at getting a compromise if they couldn’t get their nodes dropped from the plan. Administrators are trying to create more magnet seats at schools with high base populations.

School board member Lori Millberg quickly objected, saying that she’s sure parents at other schools, including non-magnets such as Davis Drive, would want this kind of expanded grandfathering. She questioned the fairness of treating base magnet students differently than base non-magnet students.

School board member Anne McLaurin brought up the idea that had been raised by a Brooks parent to give priority to them in the magnet lottery.

Millberg shot back that “they’ve been given priority” all these years by being assigned to magnet schools.

“We haven’t opened up magnet seats if we let them all back in,” Millberg said.

Only Margiotta voted for his motion.

Olds Elementary has been in flux since the school board voted last year to remove the west Raleigh school’s magnet program.

The school’s PTA is hosting an art auction on Feb. 9 to try to raise money to replace the magnet funding that the school district will be removing from Olds.

Additionally, Olds could be targeted for reassignment in the next few years.

At Monday’s work session, Chuck Dulaney, assistant superintendent for growth and planning, said they expect the school’s enrollment to fall below its capacity in a few years. That will happen once all the remaining magnet students leave and if the year-round opt-out students depart.

Once the overcrowded school has space, Dulaney said the long-range plan for Olds is to expand its base. He told the school board this could include taking some students from the base now assigned to Lacy and Root elementary schools.

Brooks parents evidently had some good suggestions, but not enough to get dropped from the reassignment plan.

Parents in Node 23 had asked to stay at Brooks. Administrators want them out to free up magnet seats at Brooks and to help raise the F&R percentage at the school.

The node 23 parents had proposed splitting up Node 242, which is coming from Durant Road. They want to continue sending 66 high-needs kids to Brooks while having the remaining 33 students from Durant go to a different school. This, they said, should free up enough space for their 55 kids to stay at Brooks.

Administrators said they agreed with splitting up node 242. They'll send the 70 kids, as suggested to Brooks. They'll keep the other 49 students at Durant until renovations at Wilburn are completed so they can go there.

But administrators said they still want to move the Node 23 students out to free up magnet seats.

Board member Lori MIllberg said Brooks needs to increase its percentages of magnet students and low-income kids if it wants to keep getting magnet money.

Board vice chair Beverley Clark's proposal to drop Node 23 was soundly rejected by the rest of the baord.

UPDATED
Changed the numbers of kids being affected in Node 242

This year’s reassignment plan is highlighting how base students are second-class citizens at magnet schools.

While base students have the same access as magnet students to the programs at magnet schools, they have much less protection from reassignment.

As noted in today’s article, school administrators are recommending moving base students out of five magnet elementary schools to create additional magnet slots. They say it’s an outgrowth of last year’s review of the magnet program in which schools were found wanting, in part, because they had a low percentage of magnet students.

It was carried over into the school board’s revised student assignment policy. In addition to calling for creating comparable schools, the policy also says the reassignment plan should see whether the objectives of the magnet program are being achieved. Those objectives are reducing high concentrations of poverty and maximizing school capacity.

If the moves are adopted by the school board, it’s not going to be easy for the base students to get in via the magnet lottery. Unless they are granted preferential status from the school board, they’ll be treated just like other magnet applicants.

There’s one notable exception to the administration’s efforts to increase magnet slots.

As noted in today’s article, administrators actually want to reduce the number of new magnet applicants at Hunter Elementary School. Administrators say that too many magnet applicants were accepted in the past, leading to overcrowding.

Considering how popular Hunter is, taking away magnet slots won’t be good news for a lot of parents. In last year’s lottery, only 153 of 590 applicants, or 26 percent, were accepted.

In addition, administrators want to reassign 66 students in from Stough Elementary to help raise Hunter’s F&R percentage up to 31 percent. Chuck Dulaney, assistant superintendent for growth and planning, said magnet schools should have F&R percentages in the 30s considering that the district elementary average is 32 percent.

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You may have missed today’s interview with new magnet programs director David Ansbacher if you don’t get the North Raleigh News.

In today’s North Raleigh News, Kinea interviewed Ansbacher about why he left the principalship of East Millbrook Middle School to take the magnet schools job. He also talked about his expectations overseeing the magnet program.

“There is so much that we can be proactive with, showing people what magnets do and why they are worth fighting for and why you in the community — whether you have kids in magnets or don’t — why you should be proud that they're here,” Ansbacher said.

The annual magnet school dance will get started next week.

Beginning on Monday, evening information sessions will be held on magnet programs. In addition to finding out more info about magnet programs, reps from Growth Management and Transportation will be on hand to answer questions.

Click here for the 2008-09 magnet schools booklet.

Click here for info on magnet elementary sessions.

Click here for info on magnet middle sessions.

By the end of the month, all the magnet schools will host visits as they try to recruit applicants.

Click here for info on the magnet elementary school visits.

Click here for info on the magnet middle school and magnet high school visits.

While they’re no longer considered magnet programs, year-round schools will hold visits on Jan. 24 at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.

All this leads up to the application period, which will run from Feb. 11-29.

The reassignment fight moves over to Farmington Woods Elementary School in Cary this morning.

Dozens of parents and students are expected to walk to Farmington Woods to show how they shouldn’t be reassigned to Briarcliff Elementary School. These parents insist that it makes no sense to reassign them when they're close enough to Farmington Woods that their kids can walk to school.

School administrators want to move 132 students out of Farmington Woods to relieve overcrowding and to create more magnet seats at the school.