The Wake County school board appointed four principals today.

Keith Richardson was chosen to lead York Elementary School in North Raleigh. He has been an assistant principal at Sycamore Creek Elementary since 2009 and will receive a salary of $64,560.

Cheryl Stidham will run Stough Elementary School in North Raleigh. Stidham has been an elementary school principal in Ohio since 2006 and will receive a salary of $77,512.

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Interim principals were appointed by the Wake County school board tonight to fill in at Stough and York elementary schools.

Dixie Frazier will fill in at Stough with a salary that's equivalent to $96,604 a year. Before retiring, she was principal of East Cary Middle, Reedy Creek Elementary and Underwood Elementary.

Edward Gainor was chosen to fill in again at York with a salary equivalent to $99,491 a year. The retired former principal of Leesville Road Elementary served as York's interim principal in the summer of 2008.

York lost its principal to one of the Renaissance Schools. Stough's principal left to run Carroll Middle.

CORRECTED TO REMOVE REFERENCE TO STOUGH PRINCIPAL LEAVING TO RUN A RENAISSANCE SCHOOL

Click here to view the bio sheets.

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata announced today the names of eight of the 10 schools that will get special academic programs for the 2011-12 school year to make them more attractive to parents.

Tata said that Hilburn Drive, York and Aversboro elementary schools, Carroll Middle School and Knightdale High School will receive STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs.

Tata announced that Timber Drive, Jeffreys Grove and Stough elementary schools will receive Global Schools programs that will include things such as greater emphasis on teaching foreign languages.

UPDATE

In case I didn't make it clear in my budget post, Tata said today that he has no plans to cut back on the new STEM schools and Global Schools even in the face of deeper than projected state funding cuts.

The Wake County school board has hired tonight principals for two schools that have drawn a lot of parental interest.

The board named Corey A. Moore to be the new principal of Walnut Creek Elementary School in Southeast Raleigh. Based on the demographic mix at Walnut Creek, where 81 percent of students are expected to receive subsidized lunches and half the students aren't passing state reading exams, a $7,000 signing bonus was offered.

Moore is an assistant principal at Middle Creek High and a former principal at Weldon High. Not including the signing bonus, his salary will be $78,102.

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CORRECTED TO SAY MOORE WAS AN ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL AT EASLEY ELEMENTARY

We could finally get an up-to-date number on how many Wake County students were assigned for socioeconomic diversity under the school district's old student assignment policy.

As noted in today's article, stats on the number of kids bused for diversity are one of the many things that the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights requested in this Dec. 7 letter to Wake school officials. Wake is crunching the numbers and will turn the info over next week.

OCR wants to know "for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years, the number of students by race/national origin and socioeconomic status (SES), as measured by a student's qualifying for free and/or reduced price lunch (FRPL), who were assigned to schools for SES-diversity purposes."

There was an audible gasp from the crowd today as Wake County school administrators indicated they're considering moves for next year that would send more students to schools near where they live in Southeast Raleigh.

Laura Evans, senior director of growth and planning, said some items are on the table now that they're considering proximity and not dealing with diversity.

The gasp came when Evans said they might relieve overcrowding at Leesville Road Middle School in North Raleigh by reassigning some students who are coming from Southeast Raleigh. Since the nodes in question happen to live near the Walnut Creek Elementary, those kids could help fill that school as well.

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You've got two weeks to press you case to Growth Management to suggest changes to the 2011-12 student assignment plan before it's presented to the Wake County school board.

Laura Evans, senior director for growth management, told board members on Tuesday that she wants input on changes by the Thanksgiving break to be able to incorporate them into the plan that will be presented Dec. 7.

Most of the suggestions will likely come from the community workshops being held next week. But Evans said people can also send e-mail to studentassignment@wcpss.net to suggest changes.

The forum Thursday at Lacy Elementary School's PTA meeting produced more than a few highlights.

You had, as previously noted, school board members Ron Margiotta and Deborah Prickett objecting to the use of student achievement in the Alves plan. You had a somewhat modified version of the presentation on the Alves plan from what was given last week to the Garner Chamber of Commerce.

You had Dana Cope questioning Tim Simmons about the Alves plan and objecting to board member Carolyn Morrison's vote this year against returning the Lacy nodes from Stough Elementary.

Tonight's PTA meeting at Lacy Elementary School could get very heated over the issue of student assignment.

Lacy's PTA has invited school board member Carolyn Morrison, her student assignment committee representative Anne Sherron and Wake Education Partnership Vice President Tim Simmons to speak at a forum on student assignment.

The word is that Simmons will be grilled on the controlled-choice plan being developed by Michael Alves and that Morrison will face questions for voting earlier this year against reassigning the Stough Elementary nodes back to Lacy.

Will the reassignment of the Garner High and Stough Elementary students be the Achilles heel for the Wake County school board majority's move to community-based schools?

As noted in today's article, the federal civil rights complaint filed by the NAACP focuses on the Garner and Stough moves to accuse the school board majority of engaging in racial discrimination. The contention is that these moves were racially based as part of an act of "intentional discrimination."

"The Board was implementing the will of a well-organized and vocal set of parents who want to live in racially-isolated neighborhoods and send their children to racially-isolated schools," according to the complaint.