The Wake County school board appointed five principals tonight while moving four principals to assistant principal posts.

Gregory Butler was named principal of North Garner Middle School with a salary of $92,707.68. He has been an assistant principal at Southeast Raleigh High since 2009.

Carmen Graf was named principal of Banks Road Elementary School in Fuquay-Varina with a salary of $73,803.68. Graf has been an assistant principal at Timber Drive Elementary since October.

UPDATE

Click here to view the bio sheets.

More details to come later but there's now a proposal on the table to collapse 14 multi-track Wake County year-round schools to a single track.

Superintendent Tony Tata proposed today giving flexibility to principals at under-enrolled year-round schools the flexibility to go to a single track for the 2011-12 school year. He said the principals would pick the track.

The schools identified by Tata are those that are at under 100 percent of what would be their single-track capacity: Alston Ridge, Ballentine, Banks Road, East Garner, Harris Creek, Highcroft, Lake Myra, Rand Road, River Bend, Timber Drive, Wakefield and West Lake elementary schools; and East Cary and Holly Grove middle schools.

UPDATE

Tata says he'll come back in May with a specific list of schools to recommend. While he didn't specify a number, it will likely not be all of the 14 year-round schools that are below 100 percent of single-track capacity.

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.

Academically gifted students are going to take a hit in the new budget.

As noted in today's article, administrators listed some of the cuts that will be made that will have an impact on the district's brightest kids. Fewer kids will be able to go to academic competitions and schools will have less AG services than normal.

Staff repeatedly said they're only doing this because of the economic conditions.

We've got four new principals tonight, including one for Broughton High School.

Stephen Mares will be Broughton's new principal. He's been principal of Daniels Middle School since 2005.

The start date at Broughton and the end date at Daniels hasn't been set yet.

UPDATE

Bios at end of post.