Wake County school board member John Tedesco's proposal for overhauling underperforming schools in conjunction with the new student assignment drew skepticism last week from the board minority and their reps on the student assignment committee.

Tedesco unveiled last week the idea of expecting schools to have at least a 70 percent proficiency rate on state exams regardless of their populations. He said the solution to improving academic achievement is to educate the students instead of distributing them around.

"We have to make sure we can get every kid to read regardless of their background," Tedesco said.

Is the Wake County school board's student assignment committee moving too quickly to make changes to the draft assignment map?

As noted in today's article, the committee voted 2-1 to approve changes Tuesday affecting more than 4,200 students. School board member John Tedesco, chairman of the committee, said they wanted to prove to the public that the lines in the map are fluid.

Tedesco said he also wanted to take care of obvious problems such as zone lines that divide neighborhoods.

The first meeting of the Wake County school board's new student assignment committee has now been set for Thursday.

School board member John Tedesco, the committee chairman, said the meeting will focus on looking at a handful of node changes for the 2010-11 school year. This includes requests from Brier Creek families to be reassigned to the new Mills Park Middle School and to stay at Panther Creek High.

The meeting will take place as the final community members of the committee are being finalized. The membership so far represents a diverse mix of people, some of whom will be well known on the blog.

 SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR FINAL TWO COMMITTEE MEMBERS

CORRECTION: I HAD THE WRONG SUE KING LISTED. SEE INFO AT END OF POST.

While voters were at the polls today, the school board was meeting.

The board has traditionally avoided doing things on Election Day that are controversial. Today's agenda looked pretty tame.

One of the things the board did today was appoint principals to Salem and Creech Road elementary schools.