September: Faced with declining enrollment and increased racial segregation in downtown classrooms, Raleigh and Wake County schools merge.

1977

September: A forerunner of today's magnet school program begins.

1985

October: Voters approve $70 million in bonds to help pay for five new schools and 14 renovations. It is the first Wake school bond referendum since a failed effort 14 years earlier.

1986

January: Wake Commission Chairman Stewart Aycock persuades the school board to consider year-round schools.

1988

June: Voters approve $125 million in bonds for 11 schools and 40 renovations.

1989

July: Kingswood Elementary in Cary opens on a single-track, year-round calendar. The experiment, along with interest in establishing multitrack schools, prompts the district to air condition all its classrooms. The job takes until 1992.

1991 July: Morrisville Elementary becomes the first new school in Wake to open on a year-round calendar with multiple tracks.

August: Superintendent Robert Wentz predicts that by 2000, at least half of Wake's public schools might have to use staggered, year-round programs.

1992

July: West Lake Middle opens as the district's first year-round multitrack middle school. Wilburn Elementary becomes the first traditional school to convert to a year-round calendar.

August: School board Chairman John Gilbert reassures parents that the district isn't considering moving to a mandatory year-round calendar.

December: School officials predict 118,000 students by 2005, a suggestion that is met with disbelief by residents and public officials.

1993

March: The school board cuts a $600 million building plan in half when it becomes obvious that voters would reject it.

1994

July: Year-round enrollment tops 5,000.

1997

July: The school board invokes state law to demand a mediated settlement with county commissioners over the operating budget. The resolution: The school system will get a set portion of the property tax rate, and the board is allowed to force a tax increase unless it is vetoed by five of seven commissioners. The deal lasts only a few years.

1999

June: Fighting a tax increase, voters reject a $650 million school bond issue.

June: Citing the need to keep up with growth after the bond defeat, county commissioners approve a controversial 10-cent property-tax increase with eight cents going toward school construction. But public protest prompts commissioners, a week later, to rescind a new 1 percent tax on real-estate sales.

July: Year-round enrollment tops 10,000.

2000

September: The school board approves a $550 million construction plan, with $500 million to come from a bond issue. To appease parents, more than half would go toward renovations and improvements instead of new schools.

October: Voters overwhelmingly approve a $500 million school bond issue.

2002

Because of the 1999 bond defeat, no new schools open for the first time in 14 years.

2003

April: The school board asks for an $867 million construction program. To avoid a tax increase, county commissioners cut it to $550 million, including a $450 million bond issue.

September: Enrollment climbs by a record 4,597 students. School leaders wonder whether this is a blip or a trend.

October: Voters approve bond issue. Moe than 40 percent is aimed at renovations.

2004

September: Enrollment grows by 5,098 students - 1,000 more than expected. To meet rising construction costs and to put up modular schools and mobile classrooms, the school board begins delaying projects approved in the 2003 bond issue.

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