The message coming from Thursday's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting is to accept nothing less than 100 percent placement of qualified middle school students in Algebra I.

As noted in today's article, staff said that 85.2 percent of eighth graders projected by EVAAS to be ready to take Algebra I have already been placed for the 2011-12 school year, up from 61.1 percent last year.

Central Office will work with the middle schools to get that placement rate as close as they can to 100 percent before traditional-calendar schools start next week.

The Wake County school board reached into Superintendent Tony Tata's former school district tonight to fill the new position of assistant superintendent for special education services.

Lisa Grillo, a former special education teacher who is currently a principal in D.C. Public Schools, was hired for the new assistant superintendent's position. Tata was D.C.'s chief operating officer before being hired by Wake.

Tata created Grillo's new position as part of a reorganization of his leadership team. Her salary was not immediately known.

UPDATE

Grillo's salary is $120,000.

The proposed revision to Wake County's student discipline policies will take up a good chunk of time at today's economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting.

School board member John Tedesco, who chairs the task force, made a last-minute adjustment to the agenda to get the discipline discussion added. He had pushed during Tuesday's board meeting to get the changes pulled from the agenda to have more discussion about them.

Tedesco said he still supports the overhaul. But Tedesco said he agree with those who think that they can make the revisions even better.

An overhaul of Wake County student discipline policies that largely eliminates zero-tolerance punishments could be adopted as soon as this week.

As noted in today's article, the Wake school board will vote Tuesday on a series of changes to the discipline policy with the biggest change being how suspensions would now be issued. School leaders expect the changes will reduce how often and how long students are suspended from school.

The changes appear to enjoy broad board support. Even critics of Wake's current discipline policies acknowledge it's a major change.

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 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.

The most anticipated discussion topic at last week's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting was the Fund 6 balances for individual schools.

Each school maintains a Fund 6 account for the revenues they generate. The amounts vary widely among the schools and are used to pay for a variety of things.

Questions about Enloe High School having the most Fund 6 revenue this past fiscal year of any school in the district at $649,325.95 took up a good chunk of the discussion. Click here for the handouts.

The one figure that people kept repeating out of Thursday's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting was 35 percent.

As noted in today's article, 35 percent is this year's gain in Algebra I enrollment under the new EVAAS placement guidelines compared to last year's total. There was a 26 percent increase in pre-Algebra enrollment. Overall, the gain for both courses was 30 percent.

"I know this is new for a lot of principals, but I want to really thank all of you for taking on the challenges," said school board member John Tedesco, chairman of the task force at Thursday's meeting. "Because of that we saw measurable gains. You can’t dispute that. A 35 percent increase is impressive."

UPDATE

SEE END OF POST FOR THURSDAY'S POWERPOINT PRESENTATION ON MATH PLACEMENT UPDATE

Is it the Wake County school system's job to provide clinical counseling services to parents or should it be done by Wake Human Services?

As noted in today's article, school administrators argue that clinical social workers and clinical psychologists are not part of the core mission of the school system. That's why they say they had asked the school board to contract with Human Services for parent counseling services rather than restoring the positions to Project Enlightenment.

“it’s not our core mission to provide clinical level counseling to parents,” said Marvin Connelly, assistant superintendent for student services. “That’s why we turned it over to the county.”

The era of strict zero tolerance discipline policies appears to be on the way out in the Wake County school system.

As noted in today's article, Assistant Superintendent Marvin Connelly said he'll present next month recommendations for dropping zero tolerance mandated punishments for a variety of offenses. The first step was on Tuesday when the board unanimously gave initial approval to changing the definition of long-term suspensions.

Pending one more vote, principals will now discretion to make a long-term suspension run between 11 days and the rest of the school year. Currently, long-term suspended kids are out the rest of the school year with no exceptions.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST