Former Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta raised nearly $65,000 in his unsuccessful re-election bid last fall.

In his year-end report filed Monday, Margiotta reported raising $64,902.72 and spending $61,006.11 during the hard-fought District 8 battle. The Republican incumbent outspent his Democratic opponent, Susan Evans, who raised $43,386.53 and spent $39.077.16.

But the gap narrows to nearly even and could possibly in the end be in Evans' favor when you throw in all the outside money that was spent to topple Margiotta from what was thought to be a safe seat in Southwest Wake.

Ron Margiotta has become only the third person to have raised more than $50,000 in a Wake County school board race.

A new campaign finance report filed this week shows that the incumbent board chairman had raised $52,748.31 as of Sept. 26. He has $31,915.55 on hand in the District 8 race.

Margiotta leads Susan Evans, who had raised $37,524.69 as of Sept. 26 with $21,770.23 on hand. But you also have to keep in mind the thousands of dollars spent by outside groups urging people to support Evans or vote against Margiotta.

Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta is trumpeting the latest data being used to justify to federal investigators the elimination of the diversity policy.

In an interview Wednesday on the Bill LuMaye show on WPTF, Margiotta said "our staff has produced numbers and has produced results that show that the system we used in the past did not work." He says it shows the board is now focused on improving achievement for all students.

When Margiotta said the data in the OCR response letter was complied by staff, LuMaye said that means it was done by "those who may not be on board with the new policy." Margiotta agreed.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR LINKS TO CHARTS COMPARING WAKE'S PERFORMANCE WITH THE STATE AND CHARLOTTE OVER TIME

Tempers flared and words were shouted Tuesday over the possibility of reassigning thousands of Southeast Raleigh students to schools closer to where they live.

The most friction came during an exchange between school board member John Tedesco and one of the community members of his student assignment committee, Anne Sherron. She accused him of misrepresenting her words during a debate about whether there's academic benefits of going to a school closer to where you live.

But before we get there, you need some background.

School board members Chris Malone and John Tedesco are trying put the blame on vice chairwoman Debra Goldman and the Democrats for the consequences of killing the zone plan.

As noted in today's article, Malone and Tedesco say the Southeast Raleigh moves proposed Tuesday are only logical given the Oct. 5 vote killing the zone plan. What's left they say now is implementing moves for next year based on proximity from the new assignment policy.

"We're going to turn the system into a true neighborhood system," Malone said. "By taking away the zones, they took away a lot of flexibility."

I'll go into more detail later, but the main thing out of today's Wake County school board student assignment committee is that staff was asked to look at moving thousands of Southeast Raleigh kids back to their neighborhood schools next year.

Committee members Tracey Noble, David William and Ann Rouleau came to today's meeting with a long list of changes, many of them involving reassigning Southeast Raleigh kids back home next year in line with the proximity guideline in the new student assignment policy.

Board member John Tedesco, chairman of the committee, cheered them on even as he pointed out that those were only suggestions at this point.

The first meeting of the Wake County school board's new student assignment committee has now been set for Thursday.

School board member John Tedesco, the committee chairman, said the meeting will focus on looking at a handful of node changes for the 2010-11 school year. This includes requests from Brier Creek families to be reassigned to the new Mills Park Middle School and to stay at Panther Creek High.

The meeting will take place as the final community members of the committee are being finalized. The membership so far represents a diverse mix of people, some of whom will be well known on the blog.

 SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR FINAL TWO COMMITTEE MEMBERS

CORRECTION: I HAD THE WRONG SUE KING LISTED. SEE INFO AT END OF POST.