Wake County school board member Kevin Hill and challenger Jennifer Mansfield lag far behind Heather Losurdo in the amount of cash raised so far in District.

The new report filed today by Hill shows he had raised $15,245 as of Aug. 30 with $12,123.69 at hand. Mansfield's new report has her with $3,582.19 raised as of Aug. 30 with $1,826.86 on hand.

Well out in front financially is Losurdo, who's raised $30,529.55 as of Aug. 30 with $11,801.85 on hand.

Wake County school board member Keith Sutton has raised nearly $20,000 in his bid to keep the District 4 seat.

The new campaign report filed today shows Sutton having raised $19,892 as of Aug. 30 with $12,272.86 on hand. No report has been filed yet by opponent Venita Peyton.

Sutton's biggest individual donor in the new report is Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon, who gave $1,000. It's Goodmon's first recorded school board contribution this season, but he is one of the hosts for a Wake County Democratic Party fundraiser being held next week.

Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta and Susan Evans are both pulling in substantial amounts of cash in the District 8 race, including money from the Popes, Bob Luddy and the Campbells.

The new campaign report filed today by Margiotta shows he had raised $40,367.33 as of Aug. 30 with $34,111.23 on hand. The new report for Evans shows she had raised $26,406.43 as of Aug. 30 with $21,405.30 on hand.

The biggest donors for Margiotta in his new report are the $4,000 apiece from conservative businessman Art Pope, his wife Katherine Pope and conservative businessman Bob Luddy.

Wake County school board candidate Jim Martin has a more than 4-to-1 fundraising edge over Cynthia Matson in the District 5 race.

According to Martin's latest campaign report posted today, he's raised $26,688.18 as of Aug. 30 and has $23,623.61 on hand. Matson''s latest report showed she had raised $6,027.10 as of Aug. 30 with $3,112.20 on hand.

The biggest donor in Martin's new report is Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker, who has contributed $1,100. Meeker's wife, Wake school board member Anne McLaurin, has donated $600. He also got $500 from Ron McFarlane, the husband of Raleigh mayoral candidate Nancy McFarlane.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Supporters of the old diversity policy are giving plenty of cash to Wake County school board candidate Christine Kushner.

Kushner's latest campaign report filed this week shows she's raised $12,061.24 so far in her bid to win the District 6 seat. Many of the donors should be familiar as they've spoken out at school board meetings and other forums against the change in student assignment.

Donors include former school board member Beverley Clark, former school board candidate Lois Nixon, Wake County PTA Council President Diane Dulaney, Amy Womble, Adrienne Lumpkin, Brenda Berg, Swain Wood, Anne Cooper and Colethia Evans.

Wake County school board member John Tedesco's proposal for overhauling underperforming schools in conjunction with the new student assignment drew skepticism last week from the board minority and their reps on the student assignment committee.

Tedesco unveiled last week the idea of expecting schools to have at least a 70 percent proficiency rate on state exams regardless of their populations. He said the solution to improving academic achievement is to educate the students instead of distributing them around.

"We have to make sure we can get every kid to read regardless of their background," Tedesco said.

There are noticeable disparities among the 16 zones in the map that the Wake County school board's student assignment committee decided Tuesday to use as the "shell" for developing the new assignment model.

As noted in today's article, there were wide disparities along racial, income, academic and graduation lines among the 16 zones in the map. One question that came up Tuesday is what's the significance of the academic disparities.

School administrators reported out the passing rates on state reading exams among elementary students, middle school students and high school students in the 16 zones.

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.