Wake County school board member Kevin Hill is promoting the endorsement he's received from former longtime board member Wray Stephens.

In a letter posted on Hill's website today, Stephens writes that District 3  voters should "elect a person whom you respect, whom you are willing to have stand in your place at the Board of Education table, and whom you believe will represent you in how he or she governs, not by partisan ideology or by personal bias, but by being a part of a board whose collective decisions must reflect the very best efforts to achieve the purpose of governance, the common good."
 
"I believe that Kevin Hill is most able to serve all of the citizens of Wake County in a manner that will make us all very proud of our local board of education," writes Stephens, who like Hill is a registered Democrat.

Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta and Susan Evans are both pulling in substantial amounts of cash in the District 8 race, including money from the Popes, Bob Luddy and the Campbells.

The new campaign report filed today by Margiotta shows he had raised $40,367.33 as of Aug. 30 with $34,111.23 on hand. The new report for Evans shows she had raised $26,406.43 as of Aug. 30 with $21,405.30 on hand.

The biggest donors for Margiotta in his new report are the $4,000 apiece from conservative businessman Art Pope, his wife Katherine Pope and conservative businessman Bob Luddy.

The school board will soon have to determine a procedure for naming a replacement for Rosa Gill, who was tapped by the leadership of the Wake County Democratic Party to fill a vacancy in the state House.

Board policy is rather brief on the process. The policy just says that the board needs to pick a replacement who is from that person's voting district to fill out the rest of the term.

But the board could go with the process that was used in 2001 when the last time a vacancy opened up.