Love it or hate it, Tuesday's election win by John Tedesco capped what's arguably the most important school board contest in the 33 years of the merged school system.

As noted in today's article, there's now a majority in place on the school board that backs neighborhood schools. It's something that even a few years ago wasn't something that most people thought would happen.

"We did it," said new school board member Deborah Prickett. "I can hardly believe it myself. The parents just had enough. The public has spoken."

In the two weeks that have marked Cathy Truitt's school board runoff election campaign, one challenge that she couldn't overcome was the inability to pick up the backing of people who supported the diversity policy.

Truitt had said she could be the swing vote against resegregation. But the Independent was the only diversity policy supporter to back her in the runoff, with columnist Bob Geary urging moderates and progressives to rally behind her.

But Truitt struck out with other groups. In particular, Wake NCAE chose not to make an endorsement in the runoff. The group had backed Horace Tart originally.

School board member Ron Margiotta made another unsuccessful pitch today for the current board to halt spending more dollars on the Forest Ridge High project.

Margiotta said they should stop spending any additional dollars on Forest Ridge while staff reviews other sites. He pointed out that the new board members also have concerns about the Forest Ridge site.

But the issue brought up by board members again is the lack of time.

The new school board members are reaching out to the black community to discuss the changes looming on the horizon in Wake.

New school board members Debra Goldman and Chris Malone and District 2 candidate John Tedesco met Thursday with school board member Keith Sutton and Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association President Danny Coleman.

Tedesco said new board member Deborah Prickett couldn't attend because of a scheduling conflict. 

We've got the political pawn/resegregationist vs. the flip-flopper.

As noted in today's article, those are some of the uncharitable accusations being flung by the candidates in the District 2 school board runoff election. There's clearly no love lost between John Tedesco and Cathy Truitt, who is expected to announce today that she's dropping out of the race.

"Every day it's a different kind of sensational language," Tedesco said in the article of Truitt's charge that she will stop him from resegregating the schools.

The future of the Wake County school system apparently hangs on the votes of the few thousand people who will likely show up on Nov. 3 for the District 2 runoff election.

As noted in today's article, it's a welcome situation for District 2 residents who've long felt that they've been overlooked and ignored by the school board. The residents of the district, largely concentrated in Garner, Fuquay-Varina and Willow Spring, will pick the ninth school board member who will break a 4-4 split on the board.

The impact of the runoff would be lessened if Cathy Truitt announces Monday that she's dropping out of the race.

For now at least, school board member Horace Tart isn't endorsing any of the candidates in the runoff election in District 2.

Tart said he's been approached by supporters of both John Tedesco and Cathy Truitt asking him for his endorsement. He said Wednesday he's staying "neutral" for now.

Reflecting on finishing third in the election, Tart said he couldn't compete with the anti-busing message of his two main opponents.

The Independent is backing Cathy Truitt in the runoff for the District 2 school board seat.

In the endorsement, the liberal weekly says neighborhood schools are going to happen after last week's election results. The Indy calls the runoff a question of "whether the new board will manage the shift to neighborhood schools carefully or precipitously, and without regard to the consequences for low-income neighborhoods."

School board candidate John Tedesco is saying thank you to voters who gave him more than 49 percent of the vote in last week's election.

In this ad appearing in weekly newspapers in Fuquay-Varina and Garner, Tedesco says "I remain humbled by this vote of confidence and public trust." He also has nice things to say about his opponents, thanking Horace Tart for his service to the community and commending Cathy Truitt and Carlene Lucas.

The provisional ballots were counted today and there's still going to be a runoff in District 2.

John Tedesco didn't get enough provsional ballots to get a majority. Horace Tart didn't get enough ballots to finish ahead of Cathy Truitt.

Full steam ahead for the Nov. 3 runoff between Tedesco and Truitt.