Wake school's magnet application period extended

Wake County parents interested in sending their kids to a magnet school have another week to submit those online applications.

That new deadline moves some other dates around. It's going to take more time for Wake schools to notify families of the application outcomes. Applicants will now be notified on Feb. 12 instead of Feb. 5. The new magnet deadline also pushes the period for transfer requests, including calendar and base requests, to Feb. 15 to Feb. 22.

This year, the magnet application and kindergarten registration periods are aligned. And parents of rising kindergartners must register their children at their base schools to get official identification numbers before moving forward with the magnet application process. The extension gives more time for both families and school staffers to process the applications.

"Many families have had to wait to get their ID numbers, so extending that will help those families be able to get their numbers and apply," Tamani Anderson Powell, magnet schools' marketing and communications director, tells me. "It's hard for one data manager to enter 200+ registrations in a day. So this will give families (and data managers) some time to get those registrations in."