Wake County school board candidate Jennifer Mansfield is mocking the skunk wars taking place in the District 3 race.

In a press release today, Mansfield's campaign says she "continues to talk to voters every day about the issues" while her opponents dress up in skunk costumes. She says her opponents "continue to fling mud at one another and try to distract voters from the real issues."

Mansfield says students aren't getting what they deserve, District 3 families aren't being well-represented and parents' needs aren't being considered in the new student assignment plan. She also says students are only beginning to be challenged to the level of their abilities and people aren't content "with the extreme partisanship demonstrated in our school board meetings."

Cash Michaels goes into Phyllis Bryson's resignation as Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta's campaign treasurer and writes that teachers and administrators aren't happy with the new math placement policy.

In an expanded online version posted today of an article in the latest issue of The Carolinian, Bryson tells Michaels that she resigned because she felt betrayed by Margiotta. She charges that Margiotta was undermining the 2009 re-election bid of her daughter, Cary Town Councilwoman Jennifer Robinson.

“I don’t know what his reasoning was. I still don’t know what his reasoning was,” Bryson says in the article, later adding that, “It was unethical for him to stab me in the back.”

Student discipline and the new middle school math policy will be on the agenda for today's meeting of the Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force.

The task force will review the changes in the revised math policy. They'll get info on Wake's suspension numbers.

Today's meeting will start at 4:30 p.m. at Moore Square Middle School, 301 S. Person St. in downtown Raleigh. The meeting was relocated to Moore Square to make it easier for task force members and staff to go to this evening's Principal of the Year ceremony at Marbles Kids Museum.

Wake County school board member Keith Sutton has raised nearly $24,000 in his bid to retain the District 4 seat.

A new campaign report filed this week shows Sutton had raised $23,872 as of Sept. 26 with $15,386.04 on hand. Venita Peyton's new report isn't up yet but she was at under $1,000 raised at the end of August.

The largest donors for Sutton in the new report are the $2,000 from Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon and $500 from Wake Citizens for Good Government.

Most of the attention today will understandably be on the new student assignment plan, but the Wake County school board could have just as equally heated a discussion on the middle school math placement policy.

Click here and here to see what the board is scheduled to give final approval to this evening. Will the Democrats still oppose the policy or will enough of the questions have been answered for it not to be a party-line vote?

One of the questions raised by board member Keith Sutton was the level of support that would be provided to schools. There's now more specific wording in the policy on support and there's also a school-by-school breakdown of how they'll use $340,960 in state funding.

UPDATE

The math policy has been removed from the agenda. The vote has been postponed to the next meeting because the board didn't have time to discuss it during the work session.

Wake County school board candidate Christine Kushner says "many questions remain" about the implementation of the new middle school math placement policy.

In a press release today, Kushner identifies six questions about the policy that's scheduled to come up for a final vote next Tuesday. The questions revolve around whether there will be enough training and resources provided to handle the increased number of students being placed in upper-level math courses once EVAAS become the placement tool.

“Our schools need the resources and planning to make this move toward rigorous curriculum effective — and it must work, for our teachers and for our students,” Kushner says in the press release. “Otherwise, we are setting children up either to fail or to be denied access to rigorous courses because of a lack of funding or resources. Neither is acceptable.”

Kushner suggests that teachers who are teaching higher level math for the first time should be paired with veteran teachers and receive professional development.

It shouldn't be a surprise who the Independent is endorsing for the Wake County school board.

In the latest issue of the liberal weekly out today, the Indy is backing Kevin Hill in District 3, Keith Sutton in District 4, Jim Martin in District 5, Christine Kushner in District 6 and Susan Evans in District 8. It matches the endorsements made by the Wake County Democratic Party and Wake NCAE.

"If all five win, the 5-4 conservative majority on the board will be ousted, replaced by a new 5-4 majority of moderate candidates," the Indy writes. "It can happen if the voters who believe in public education and want every child in the county to get a good one take time to vote. Two years ago, they stayed away in droves, and they let the tea party win. We've seen what followed."

Wake County school board member Keith Sutton took some heat Thursday night on his position on the math placement policy from a person who's normally one of his supporters.

During the District 4 candidate forum, Bridgette Burge of the YWCA of the Greater Triangle criticized Sutton for wanting to use a higher that 70 percent EVAAS probability of success for placing students in  Algebra I in eighth-grade. This came after Cash Michaels of The Carolinian asked Sutton "to give clarity" on why board majority was being "political" in trying to pass the new math policy and saying teachers systemwide excluded qualified minority students.

"You know I love you both," Burge said to Sutton and Michaels. "I'm on a different side around this on placement. We're gong to bicker about 5 percent here and there when kids of color and low-income kids have been pushed out and not given the chance to go into the high-achieving classes just because they're kids of color and because they're low-income kids?

It looks like it will be a few more weeks before the Wake County school board votes on final adoption of the new middle school math placement policy.

The math policy was originally added to the agenda for Tuesday's meeting. But school board chairman Ron Margiotta and board vice chairman John Tedesco agreed to push the second reading to the Oct. 4 meeting.

Tedesco said the additional time could address some of the concerns about the policy while also allowing for more time Tuesday to discuss student assignment issues. But he said he's still against two of the major changes suggested by Democratic board members.

The fireworks from Wednesday's Wake County school board candidate forum in District 3 came from Jennifer Mansfield.

As noted in today's article, Mansfield went after incumbent board member Kevin Hill on several occasions. Hill, Heather Losurdo and Eric Squires didn't criticize other candidates during the forum.

“He’s stonewalled and been very obstructionist in trying to get any positive changes made in the system,” Mansfield said of Hill.