RALEIGH - Some Wake County commissioners said Thursday they would urge the school board to accept the decision of Judge Howard Manning Jr. and move forward.

"The ruling was unexpected, but I'm very pleased with it," said Tony Gurley, the commissioners' chairman.

"The judge said they can't have a year-round conversion without parental consent. That's all we on the board have been saying from the start."

A majority on the county board has butted heads with the school board over plans to convert 22 schools to a year-round schedule on a mandatory basis, with the commissioners voting earlier this year to block funding for the change. Under state law, boards of education are elected to run the schools, but the county commissioners control the purse strings.

Gurley, who voted to withhold the money, said the school board's next step should be to drop plans to convert its targeted schools to mandatory year-round, many of which were clustered in fast-growing southwestern Wake. The board should work with parents to voluntarily convert more schools to a year-round schedule.

"I think a significant number of parents would choose a year-round schedule if given the option, but when it's made mandatory parents will rebel," Gurley said. "The school board needs to follow Judge Manning's ruling and involve parents in the process from here on out."

Commissioner Joe Bryan, who also voted to hold back the conversion, said that the school board should embrace parental choice. He repeated his call for the school board to expedite another bond referendum to build new schools faster.

"I'm certainly willing and want to help as much as possible in a strategy that has the least impact and the most choice for our families," Bryan said.

Wake voters narrowly approved a $970 million school construction bond in November, but that package was pared down from original estimates that the system would need as much as $2 billion in new facilities.

Gurley said that if the school board needed more money than was on the ballot, the board should have asked for it. But he said if the 2006 request had been more than $1 billion, he doubts it would have passed.

Like Bryan, the commissioners' chairman said he would support moving ahead with the next bond request sooner than planned, but he would rather see it put before voters in 2009 than in 2008.

"I would really prefer it be on the ballot in a year the school board is up for election, not when the commissioners are," Gurley said.