The new Democratic majority on the Wake County school board is now in place following a packed swearing-in ceremony.

After being sworn in, the new members talked about focusing on improving education for Wake’s 146,000 students, listening to the families and trying to go beyond the 5-4 votes on major issues that took place over the past two years.

“If this board comes together with the common denominator of all children all schools, we’ll continue to have a very successful 16th largest school district in the nation,” said school board member Kevin Hill.

Candidate and school board chairman Ron Margiotta held firm to his opposition to the use of achievement schools as he touched on student assignment and other matters today.

In an interview today with conservative WPTF talk show host Bill LuMaye, Margiotta said parents all across the county, including those in Southeast Raleigh, have indicated they want neighborhood schools. He pointed to how parents on the online test drive overwhelmingly chose their closest school.

"Parents want to be close to home and as far as I'm concerned every school in this county should be a high-achieving school," Margiotta said. "And I think that's what our goal should be: to make every school high achieving, not just ones in the suburbs. or not just our magnet schools within the cities, wherever they may be."

David Holdzkom is now Wake County's highest paid classroom teacher.

As noted in today's article, Superintendent Tony Tata involuntarily removed  Holdzkom last Friday from his position of assistant superintendent of evaluation and research. With no other senior position in store, Holdzkom said he asked to be sent back to the classroom.

Holdzkom was reassigned Wednesday to Millbrook High SChool to be an English  teacher, which he is licensed to do. He said he'll be teaching English IV and Shakespeare.

Is the Wake Count school system not getting the best bang for the buck by offering higher pay for teachers who have master's degrees or national board certification?

At Tuesday's school board work session, school administrators presented data showing the majority of Wake's high-performing teachers don't have either a master's degree or national board certification.

"An important point is we pay extra for the board-certified teachers and the advanced-degree teachers receive extra but the high-performing teachers receive nothing," said Superintendent Tony Tata.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

The issue of whether siblings could be accommodated on Track 4 decided which Wake County year-round schools would make the move to a single track for the next two school years.

Click here for this handout that shows how the 14 underutilized year-round schools were evaluated by staff. Inability to accommodate siblings was cited for eight of the nine schools as to why a move to a single-track year-round calendar wasn't considered feasible.

Laura Evans, senior director for Growth and Planning, said inability to accommodate siblings reflected challenges caused by moving multi-track year-round schools to a single-track calendar.

Who makes the most money in the Wake County school system?

That's one of the questions that the Charlotte Observe looked at as part of a Sunday article on six-figures salaries in Wake and Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools. Wake had 99 employees making at least $100,000 with 60 of them being principals.

This compares to 103 Wake employees with six-figure salaries in 2010, 112 in 2009 and 99 in 2008.

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.

How much importance should be placed on high school graduation rates?

School districts weren't required to keep real graduation rate figures until the No Child Left Behind legislation went into law. It became such as big deal that the old school board had a goal of graduating every student by 2013.

The significance of graduation figures was discussed during last week's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting.

Is the glass half full or half empty when it comes to comparing how the Wake County school system is doing academically versus other school districts?

During Tuesday's school board work session, school administrators touted how Wake is doing better overall than the state and the state's four other largest districts. But school board member John Tedesco focused more on how Wake is trailing some of those districts among some subgroups.

In addition, questions were raised whether greater funding might explain why Wake is trailing among some of the subgroups.

There are a number of peopel who don't think the Wake County school board's efforts to get more students into Algebra I in middle school is a good idea.

During last week's board meeting, N.C. State Professor Jim Martin said he fully supports that "nothing but competency" be used in assigning students to Algebra I. He said it's "unacceptable" to make placement decisions in Algebra I based on race or economic status.

"However I must counter the myth that is being perpetuated," Martin quickly added. "You don't need algebra in middle school to be competitive in application to college."