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.

The Wake County school diversity fight will be the focus of today's State of Things show on WUNC.

Supporters of the old diversity policy will make up the majority of guests on today's show. Host Frank Stasio will talk with the Rev. Nancy Petty, senior pastor of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church; Gerald Grant, author of ""Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh;" and Marie Garlock, a former Wake student who was among those arrested at the July 20 school board meeting.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST, INCLUDING SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SHOW

Gerald Grant spent a lot of time at Saturday's Great Schools in Wake Coalition forum going after you guys on the WakeEd blog.

Grant, author of the book "Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There are no Bad Schools in Raleigh," opened things by saying he had downloaded 28 pages from an N&O blog about Wake County schools. While he didn't say WakeEd by name, there aren't a ton of possibilities.

Grant said diversity policy supporters need to overcome the obstacles of false beliefs being spread by commenters on the blog. He said he's not calling them lies because the writers believe in what they are saying.

It's looking more like the upcoming Great Schools in Wake Coalition forum on March 20 will be rallying cry for diversity policy supporters before the March 23 Wake County school board vote on the community schools resolution.

In a press release today, GSIW is calling the event "an important fact-sharing forum that celebrates the strengths of our public schools and addresses the challenges to maintaining national leadership and high student achievement in Wake County." They're calling it the "Won't You Be My Neighbor" forum.

By bringing in speakers like educational researcher Richard Kahlenberg, author Gerald Grant, former Wake Superintendent Bill McNeal and former Wake magnet director Caroline Massengill, the message will be why it's important to have socioeconomically diverse schools.

The Great Schools in Wake Coalition is organizing a trio of meetings to build community support for saving the school diversity policy.

In a press release Monday, the group announced a pair of February neighborhood forums "to educate the public about critical issues facing our schools." But the biggest event could be a March forum that will include Bill McNeal, Gerald Grant, Richard Kahlenberg and Caroline Massengill.

The first forum will be on Feb. 18 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at St. Matthews AME Church, 1629 Bennett St. in Raleigh. The speakers will include retired educator Dudley Flood, Margaret Rose Murray and Wake County Commissioner Lindy Brown.

It doesn't look like our British neighbors have been keeping up with the recent school board election results.

In a column in today's Independent, a British tabloid, liberal political writer Johann Hari urges England's schools to adopt Wake's socioeconomic diversity policy. He's basing it off Gerald Grant's book "Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh."

Longtime former Broughton High School Principal Diane Payne became the seventh and final applicant today hoping to replace Beverley Clark on the school board.

In her application, Payne stressed her lengthy career as an educator, including the nearly 13 years she spent as principal of Broughton High School in Raleigh until her retirement in 2005. Among the items in her application, she supports the Wednesday early dismissals and praises the diversity policy.

“If selected, I will bring both my varied background and my student-focused perspective to the Board and in so doing hope to do my part to achieve the Board’s [100 percent graduation] Goal,” Payne wrote in her application.

UPDATED JULIE NAU'S APPLICATION TO INCLUDE REFERENCES

You guys may want to say hello to Gerald Grant, who viewed the blog Thursday before speaking at Quail Ridge Books & Music on his new book "Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh."

In front of around 100 people, Grant forcefully articulated his support for Wake's diversity policy. Citing a February article, he took Dana Cope, leader of the Children's PAC, to task for saying, "how dare they use my children for a social experiment that has gone wrong and needs replacing."

"The experiment has not gone wrong as Dana Cope says," Grant said. "It doesn't need to be replaced. It needs to be replicated."

Are there no bad schools in Raleigh?

That's the provocative message from Gerald Grant in his new book "Hope and Despair in the American City: Why there are no bad schools in Raleigh." As noted in today's article, Grant is in Raleigh to talk about his book at 7:30 p.m. at Quail Ridge Books & Music.

Grant believes that other school districts should emulate Wake's socioeconomic diversity policy. He calls Wake one of the few urban school systems that has made good on the democratic bargain of providing equal educational opportunities for all.