Ed Lane, 81, died last weekend. He was a football, wrestling and track coach at Cary High.

How has the Wake County school system determined if a school is "healthy?"

David Holdzkom, assistant superintendent for evaluation and research, gave the school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force a rundown on Thursday as he presented Wake's 2009-10 Healthy Schools Report.

The repot looks at academic performance, school populations, facilities, technology, climate, resources, staffing and programs at individual schools. The report is a carryover from the old days of the socioeconomic diversity policy.

UPDATE

For those who are having problems viewing the PDF links I put up, the ED task force has now posted them on its website. Click here to view the Healthy School Report. Click here to view the report with the staffing data.

Poverty levels are up across the Wake County school system this year with additional schools having more than half of the students receiving federally subsidized lunches.

In this week's issue of In Context, the e-newsletter of the Wake Education Partnership, the WEP reports that the districtwide F&R percentage this school year is 32.4 percent. That's up from 31.2 percent the prior year.

The WEP, using these figures from the school system, also notes that 31 of Wake's 163 schools now have more than half of the students receiving subsidized lunches. That compares to 25 schools the prior year.

It doesn't look like the school system's resolve to turn down year-round applications when it impacts diversity is weakening.

As noted in today's article, Rosa Gill, chairwoman of the school board, said they want to avoid repeating how year-round schools had very low percentages of low-income students when admission was all voluntary.

"You know that year-round schools were elitist before," Gill said.