RALEIGH - Wake County schools Superintendent Tony Tata and his staff have spent months crafting a plan to determine where the district's students will attend school in the 2012-13 year, but controversy over the document appears to be far from over.

Key elements of the plan remain to be decided. So during the next two months, the 14 candidates campaigning for five board seats will likely engage in charged discussions about the plan while it's still in progress.

Tata shared elements of the plan with school board members last week. Under the developing plan, parents will choose among several nearby schools, at least one magnet school and an "achievement" school, or higher-performing facility usually located in a relatively affluent area.

Already, the debate has begun.

Tata and school board Chairman Ron Margiotta hold different positions on the use of achievement schools as a means to even out opportunity for all students.

Margiotta said last week that he opposes the achievement school approach.

He called it a version of Wake's former policies of sending students from low-performing schools to distant schools with better track records.

"What we are attempting to do is bring forth an assignment plan that's satisfactory to the community," Margiotta said. "If it's not, I'm not going to support it.

"I have a problem with setting aside any seats for achievement," he continued. "It's substituting achievement for race, or economics."

And if relying on proximity results in high concentrations of low-income students, how would the system deal with that?

"It's sad if we say that every school in the county is not an achievement school," Margiotta said. "Some of the schools in my district are non-achieving, and I want to know why."

Margiotta, an Apex resident who represents District 8, will be the only member of the school board's controlling coalition up for re-election on Oct. 11.

He and Christine Kushner, a candidate for Carolyn Morrison's former District 6 seat, said the issue of achievement schools will likely figure in campaign discussions.

"Surely there will be controversy over the achievement schools," said Kushner, who has been an active school system volunteer and parent. "Achievement needs to be a factor in student assignment."

Steps in the coming process involve the board's own tweaking of details of the plan, getting comment from the public at hearings, adding up transportation costs under different versions and communicating enough information to give families the best use of the choices offered.

More to come

"We are at the beginning of a community conversation about student assignment," said Kushner, a proponent of the former diversity-based assignment plan. "I think an election is an appropriate time to do it."

Division among the Republican-backed members of the board derailed a previous zone-based plan in 2010, leading to Tata's shouldering of the process.

Even if the current board were to approve a plan before the Oct. 11 elections, voters' choices about the contested seats could lead to further alterations.

"If we stay focused on the students, irrespective of what might change politically, we'll be in a good place," Tata said. "At the end of the day, everyone recognizes that all students deserve access to a high quality education."