Wake County school board member Kevin Hill and challenger Jennifer Mansfield lag far behind Heather Losurdo in the amount of cash raised so far in District.

The new report filed today by Hill shows he had raised $15,245 as of Aug. 30 with $12,123.69 at hand. Mansfield's new report has her with $3,582.19 raised as of Aug. 30 with $1,826.86 on hand.

Well out in front financially is Losurdo, who's raised $30,529.55 as of Aug. 30 with $11,801.85 on hand.

David Holdzkom is now Wake County's highest paid classroom teacher.

As noted in today's article, Superintendent Tony Tata involuntarily removed  Holdzkom last Friday from his position of assistant superintendent of evaluation and research. With no other senior position in store, Holdzkom said he asked to be sent back to the classroom.

Holdzkom was reassigned Wednesday to Millbrook High SChool to be an English  teacher, which he is licensed to do. He said he'll be teaching English IV and Shakespeare.

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 efforts to increase minority and overall student enrollment in Wake County's Algebra I middle school classes will be under the microscope in more ways than one today.

School board vice chairman John Tedesco, head of the economically disadvantaged student performance task force, said today's special meeting will look at the draft policy on increasing Algebra I enrollment. He said he's also expecting detailed school-by-school placement data for 2011-12, along with information on what's being done to increase enrollment among students identified by EVAAS as being Algebra I ready.

In addition, Tedesco said a writer from the Huffington Post plans to attend today's meeting. The liberal web site has run several articles critical of the new school board majority, including this story on Monday.

The meeting starts at 4:30 p.m. at Brentwood Elementary School, 3426 Ingram Road in North Raleigh.

UPDATE

Click here to view the meeting agenda. Tedesco is being interviewed by the Huffington Post writer. Her presence got WRAL to attend today's meeting.

I will have a much more detailed post, including the handouts from the meeting, later. But for now here's the online story from the meeting.

Here's a quick recap of today's news conference with Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata with more to come later.

Tata said he'll ask the school board to adopt a new policy saying that middle school students should be enrolled in Algebra I if they're projected to have a 70 percent chance of success by EVAAS. Tata said the new policy would only allow professional judgment to be used to place students in Algebra I and not to keep them out.

The use of professional judgment to exclude students from Algebra I has been a contentious issue.

Tata said enrollment in Algebra I is projected to hit 6,000 students this fall, compared to 4,500 this past school year and 3,000 in the 2009-10 school year. Even with the increase in enrollment this past school year, Tata focused on how scores essentially stayed the same and didn't drop dramatically as some feared would take place.

UPDATE

School board vice chairman John Tedesco said he asked staff to draft the new policy following his dissatisfaction over the Algebra I presentations at the last ED task force meeting.

Middle school math placement, the Khan Academy and a policy on equity will be discussed at today's meeting of the Wake County school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force.

School board vice chairman John Tedesco, chair of the task force, said staff will provide a detailed report on 2011-12 middle school math placement efforts. There was skepticism that some schools weren't being as diligent as others at using the new EVAAS-based criteria to place more students in advanced math classes.

Tedesco said they'll also watch a video from the non-profit Khan Academy, which has more than 2,000 videos available on YouTube. The videos cover a variety of topics to teach people math and other concepts.

UPDATE

Click here to view the handouts from the meeting.

Wake County school board candidate Jennifer Mansfield is praising the actions of the new school board majority while also warning that things have become too politicized.

In an interview Thursday on the Rick and Donna Martinez Show on WPTF, Mansfield highlighted he tightrope she's walking on of trying to get people who disagree with incumbent Kevin Hill to vote for her instead of Heather Losurdo.

"District 3 for the last four years has not had a voice for parents and students so that's first and foremost is to be a voice for District 3 residents," Mansfield answered when asked why she's running. "And we need somebody who's in there whose experienced and I've been doing this for over six years, been involved in school issues."

The repeated theme at last week's ED task force meeting is that all children can succeed but it's going to take a lot of hard work from the school system to help the students out.

The tenor of the Wake County school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting was set when this YouTube video of Sir Ken Robinson was shown to a packed room of teachers and principals.

Robinson contends that the current educational system is based on the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment and the environment of the Industrial Revolution. He argues that most people don't benefit from that model, creating the plague of ADHD.

Project Bright Idea will take center stage on the agenda at today's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting.

In a nutshell, the goal of Project Bright Idea is to increase the number of children from underserved populations in gifted and academically challenging programs. The idea is the students are more likely to excel and perform as if they're gifted if high expectations are set for them.

While begun as an elementary school program, this Duke Today article talks about how elements of Bright Idea have been incorporated at Fuquay-Varina High. It's credited with helping narrow the school's racial achievement gap.

The Wake County school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force will focus on how to help African American children at today's meeting.

The task force will discuss the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Resilience in African American Children and Adolescents Report. The guest speaker is Stephanie Irby Coard, the APA task force chair and a professor at UNC-Greensboro.

The report seems to fit in with school board member John Tedesco's efforts to move the discussion away from looking at at-risk models when dealing with minority and low-income students.