ZEBULON - Town commissioners questioned Wake County’s new school assignment plan Monday night following remarks Wake School Board District 1 Representative Chris Malone at Monday night’s town board meeting.

Malone said the state of the system is “good” as he gave commissioners an overview of recent school board activity, including the actions of the new Democratic majority that took office on the board last week.

But it wasn’t until Malone mentioned the new school assignment plan Commissioners Curtis Strickland and Dale Beck voiced their opinions. Malone said the new plan was designed to give students more choice in their school selection, and that he doesn’t see a situation in which a given student would not be granted enrollment into the school of their choice.

Beck expressed his interest in having a local high school to serve Wendell and Zebulon in the future. He said it doesn’t make sense East Wake High School is located just five miles from Knightdale High School.

“They’re just too close together,” Beck said. “I think it goes back to the history of putting East Wake where it is. My opinion years ago was they should’ve built East Wake around the Lizard Lick area.”

Malone told Beck a Zebulon-area high school would likely be built in the future, but that it could be 15 years from now when an increase in population results in additional space needs.

Beck was disappointed by Malone’s response, but said the town has no control over the matter.

“They’ve been saying 20 years out here forever, but I knew that’s what the response would be so I wasn’t surprised,” Beck said. “I think when we get enough people out here they’ll be forced to build a high school out here, but when they think about location of schools sometimes I think they need to think a little further out.”

Strickland has no issues with Zebulon students being assigned to the future Rolesville High School as a base school. That school is scheduled to open in August 2013. He does have an issue with the school being named Rolesville.

“They could call it Northeast Wake or Mitchell Mill High School, just not Rolesville,” Strickland said, noting the name assigned to the future school doesn’t cover all the areas the school would serve.

He also took advantage of Malone’s visit to express his concern that the eastern side of the county receives too little attention from the school board.

“Think about what we see on the news and in the newspaper,” Strickland said. “We get no good press about what our kids are doing or how they’re performing. It’s gotten so political and it’s just a fight is all it is. Take the politics out of it. To throw politics into it takes away from the educational part of it.”