RALEIGH - A judge's ruling Thursday left thousands of Wake County families uncertain where their children will go to school this fall or what calendar they'll follow.

Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr. ruled that the Wake school system can't require students to attend year-round schools; 22 were scheduled to convert to the calendar this summer to ease crowding.

His broad ruling doesn't affect just the 20,717 students at those schools. It touches thousands of other students assigned to existing year-round and modified-calendar schools as well as many students at traditional-calendar schools who were part of the district's latest reassignment plan.

The ruling is a major blow to the county's efforts to keep up with population growth. As one of the state's fastest growing systems, Wake annually reassigns thousands of students to fill new schools, ease crowding and promote socioeconomic diversity. The year-round conversions form a major part of the reassignment plan because they allow the county to handle more new students without building as many schools.

If the district can't use mandatory year-round schools, it might resort to split shifts at some elementary schools. Some students would attend class in the morning and others in the evening.

"What are we going to be able to do with all of them now?" asked school board member Carol Parker. "It's up in the air now."

The school board will try to find answers at an emergency meeting this morning. They'll discuss legal options, including appealing Manning's ruling that state law doesn't give Wake the authority to use mandatory year-round schools.

The board could ask the N.C. Court of Appeals to block Manning's ruling until their appeal is decided.

For now, there's little that school leaders can tell parents about how they'll house students this fall when 8,000 additional students are projected to join the 128,072-student system.

"We have a lot of questions we don't have answers for right now," said Rosa Gill, vice chairwoman of the school board. The board's chairwoman, Patti Head, is in China on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

Patrice Lee, a co-founder of Wake CARES, the parent group that filed the lawsuit, said it's the school system's fault that it now has to scramble for a backup plan.

"If Plan B was ready, Plan B could be initiated tomorrow," Lee said. "They did not have a plan, so there's going to be a little bit of time to determine exactly what direction we're going in. We're extremely sorrowful if this is going to cause problems for families with plans because we know what that is like to have to juggle."

Is there enough room?

Ecstatic members of Wake CARES and their supporters gathered at a soda shop in downtown Apex to speak to reporters and take a few shots at a school board they derided as unresponsive to the wishes of parents.

"I'm very hopeful this school board is not going to resort to such tactics as split schedules or other types of this that they have presented out there," Lee said.

"We can seat these children. We are seating them now. We do have issues of growth that we do have to address in the future here and we are more than willing to work with the school board to get the best type of education for these students."

School leaders say the year-round calendar can handle more students than traditional schools because buildings are in constant use with four staggered schedules, or tracks. Other school systems use year-round schools, but they usually make them voluntary to avoid parental opposition.

Wake CARES contends that requiring only some students to attend year-round schools violates the state constitution's guarantee of a "uniform system" of schools with "equal opportunities" for all students.

Manning went even further than the injunction Wake CARES had wanted to block the conversions. He said Wake can only make a student attend a school that's on a traditional calendar.

Ann Majestic, the school board's attorney, said the ruling is extremely broad and could force Wake to allow thousands of families now assigned to mandatory year-round schools and modified-calendar schools to leave.

Board faces problems

Wake CARES has argued that the growth can be handled by using more classroom trailers. But school officials say they wouldn't be able to get them in place before traditional-calendar schools start Aug. 27.

School board member Lori Millberg said they'd "have no choice" but to use split shifts at some schools.

"A lot of people who were happy with going to a year-round school are going to be unhappy they're going to a traditional-calendar school on a split session," Millberg said.

Parker, the school board member, said the entire reassignment plan is interconnected so that losing the mandatory year-round schools means they can't make other moves.

Millberg said there are also long-term problems. The $970 million bond issue voters approved in November is based on the assumption that all new elementary schools and middle schools will open on a mandatory year-round calendar. She said that making year-round schools voluntary wouldn't guarantee the district could fill all the year-round seats needed to keep up with growth.

Michael Evans, a spokesman who answered questions for Superintendent Del Burns, said the district needs to think deliberately about how it will respond to the ruling.

"The last thing you want to do right now is make knee-jerk decisions that have unforeseen consequences," Evans said.

Changing plans

The ruling split parents.

Pleasant Union Elementary School parent Amy Leinfelder was picking up her 4-year-old from preschool when she heard about Manning's ruling.

"I'm excited. I went in the parking lot and cried," said Leinfelder, who frequently spoke against the year-round conversions.

Many parents said they were at least trying to come to terms with the year-round decision.

"We've already done so much extensive planning to make this work," said Cary father Edward Brugnoli. "This will cause greater hardships. I don't know what we will do."