CARY, NC – Receiving public input and deciding on specific topics for detailed analysis top the agenda of the first meeting of the joint Cary-Garner Mayors’ Task Force on School Assignment, set for this Thursday evening from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Cary Senior Center. Co-chaired by Cary Mayor Glen Lang and Garner Mayor Sam Bridges, the new 20-member citizen group will kick off its six-month effort to articulate, prioritize, and work with the Wake County Public School Board to positively and effectively resolve the most critical school assignment issues by identifying, prioritizing and deciding on the list of specific components of school assignment that will become topics for its monthly meetings.

While neither mayor could say for sure what topics might end up on the short list for the group’s upcoming meetings, Cary Mayor Glen Lang did list some of the likely candidates. "I think it’s a good bet that we’ll see many of the issues raised at the October 3^rd worksession, such as stability, planning, choice, strategies for managing changing populations, funding, and flight from the public schools."

The Task Force will decide on the upcoming meeting topics after hearing suggestions from members of the public that attend the first meeting.

Laying the foundation for subsequent discussions of the topics may prove to be somewhat more challenging than anticipated. Earlier plans to begin each meeting with a presentation from the Wake County Public School System have been scrapped after the school board said doing so would stretch its resources too thinly. At this point, the Mayors’ Task Force will instead rely on existing data and information already collected by the Wake County Public School System. The school board did agree to allow the Mayor’s Task Force to nominate one of its members for consideration for a seat on the school system’s upcoming Healthy Schools Task Force.

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