Cathy Truitt is taking on her District 2 school board opponents and school board member Ron Margiotta in her new newspaper ad.

In an ad that ran Tuesday in weekly newspapers in Fuquay-Varina and Garner, Truitt stresses her experience as a retired Johnston County educator. She also calls herself an "independent voice" as she blasts incumbent Horace Tart, challenger John Tedesco, western Wake and even Margiotta.

"If you want the status quo then vote for Horace Tart," Truitt said in the ad. "If you want a political pawn of Ron Margiotta and Western Wake County vote for John Tedesco. If you want an independent voice who will stand up and fight for better schools for Garner and Fuquay, then I ask for your support and vote.”

This blog post is for folks who want to talk about Tuesday night's forum for the District 2 school board candidates.

I wasn't at the forum. But you should be able to watch it on NBC !7's web site as they plan to post the entire forum online.

NBC 17 is doing live streaming of all four forums sponsored by the Wake Education Partnership. Next week, forums will be held for the District 1 and District 9 races.

The 30-day pre-election campaign finance reports for Wake school board candidates are trickling in.

Candidates who intend to spend more than $3,000 have to have their report postmarked by today. As of this morning, five reports were in at the Wake Board of Elections.

The most interesting reports tell who is backing incumbent Horace Tart and challenger Cathy Truitt in the District 2 race. John Tedesco's report hadn't been in as of this morning.

It looks like it's now just a three-person race for the District 2 school board seat.

Carlene Lucas has told the Wake Education Partnership that she is no longer actively campaigning in District 2. Like Chris Augustine, who also stopped actively campaigning, she'll still be on the ballot.

Lucas was admittedly a long-shot candidate to win in District 2, which covers Garner, Fuquay-Varina and Willow Spring. She planned to spend less than $3,000 and didn't have the backing of any of the major groups.

Lucas will also not be attending tonight's candidate forum. This should give more time to the remaining active candidates: incumbent Horace Tart, John Tedesco and Cathy Truit.

BiggerPicture4Wake is joining Wake NCAE in backing the same set of candidates who would support current school board policies.

In a press release today, BiggerPicture announced it was endorsing Rita Rakestraw in District 1, Horace Tart in District 2, Karen Simon in District 7 and Lois Nixon in District 9. The group said "it is critical that we build upon the past 30 years of progress in Wake County; not undo it by instituting an anti-diversity policy."

BiggerPicture formed last fall to support conversion of Leesvile Road Middle to a year-round calendar. On the flip side, Concerned and Committed Leesville Parents has backed conversion opponent Deborah Prickett in District 7.

Here's hoping attendance is better at tonight's school board candidate forum compared to the one that took place Saturday.

As noted in Sunday's article by Stanley Chambers, only about 30 people attended Saturday's forum sponsored by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children. That event drew six candidates from all four board races.

Tonight's forum, sponsored by the Wake Education Partnership and local chambers of commerce, will focus on District 2. All four candidates who are still campaigning have said they'll attend: Carlene Lucas, Horace Tart, John Tedesco and Cathy Truitt.

Here are two competing views of what the Wake County school system needs or doesn't need.

In an op-ed in Monday's N&O, Allison Backhouse of Wake Schools Community Alliance accuses the school system of working for itself and not being family friendly. In an attack on reassignment, the diversity policy and mandatory year-round schools, she urges voters to back the group's candidates in this fall's elections.

Chris Fitzsimon, executive director of the liberal N.C. Policy Watch, fired back Tuesday with an online column challenging Backhouse's assertions. Fitzsimon contends that "the people in Wake County are proud of their school system and don’t want to see it dismantled and returned to separate and unequal."

UPDATE

Click here for the response to Fitzsimon's column at Bob Luebke's blog for the conservative Civitas Institute.

The Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children is holding a school board candidate forum on Saturday but they're not getting much of a response from the main opposition candidates.

CCCAAC President Calla Wright said five of the 12 candidates have agreed to attend so far. They are Rita Rakestraw, Carlene Lucas, Cathy Truitt, Karen Simon and Lois Nixon.

None of the candidates backed by Wake Schools Community Alliance, Take Wake Schools Back and the Wake County Republican Party have agreed to attend so far.

UPDATE

Calla Wright has confirmed that Horace Tart says he'll attend. No info back yet on John Tedesco.

Wake NCAE announced today its endorsements for this fall's school board elections.

The group is backing Rita Rakestraw in District 1, Horace Tart in District 2, Karen Simon in District 7 and Lois Nixon in District 9. With 5,000 school employees in the organization, Wake NCAE's backing could be a major factor in the elections.

Jennifer Lanane, president of Wake NCAE, said the group "will work hard this election season to help each of these pro-public education candidates get into office."

In order to try to keep the various blog posts on topic, I'm breaking out the discussion of the Independent weekly's candidate questionnaires into a separate item.

Click here for the questionnaires that have been returned so far to the Independent. It looks like six of the 12 school board candidates have responded.

The Indy asked 14 questions, including: