The Wake County school board appointed five principals tonight while moving four principals to assistant principal posts.

Gregory Butler was named principal of North Garner Middle School with a salary of $92,707.68. He has been an assistant principal at Southeast Raleigh High since 2009.

Carmen Graf was named principal of Banks Road Elementary School in Fuquay-Varina with a salary of $73,803.68. Graf has been an assistant principal at Timber Drive Elementary since October.

UPDATE

Click here to view the bio sheets.

The issue of whether siblings could be accommodated on Track 4 decided which Wake County year-round schools would make the move to a single track for the next two school years.

Click here for this handout that shows how the 14 underutilized year-round schools were evaluated by staff. Inability to accommodate siblings was cited for eight of the nine schools as to why a move to a single-track year-round calendar wasn't considered feasible.

Laura Evans, senior director for Growth and Planning, said inability to accommodate siblings reflected challenges caused by moving multi-track year-round schools to a single-track calendar.

The most anticipated discussion topic at last week's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting was the Fund 6 balances for individual schools.

Each school maintains a Fund 6 account for the revenues they generate. The amounts vary widely among the schools and are used to pay for a variety of things.

Questions about Enloe High School having the most Fund 6 revenue this past fiscal year of any school in the district at $649,325.95 took up a good chunk of the discussion. Click here for the handouts.

Two speakers stood out during Tuesday's public comment section at the Wake County school board meeting.

Diana Bader was the most melodramatic speaker. Marcia Timmel got the most laughs.

Bader walked up to the podium carrying a stack of children's blocks which she stacked up and said represented various parts of the student assignment process, including stability, choice, facility utilization, using magnets, grade structure and students with higher needs.

Why were a majority of qualified black and Hispanic students not placed in advanced math classes in Wake County middle schools for years?

As noted in today's article, the new EVAAS-based selection criteria is expected to sharply increase placement in middle schools this school year. As the SAS EVAAS report showed, Algebra-ready black and Hispanic students were the least likely to have gotten placed before.

Questions abut institutionalized racism and low expectations have been tossed out as possible reasons for the low placement rates.

CORRECTED POST TO SAY BARBARA WALTERS

Congratulations to North Garner Middle School Principal John Wall, who has been named one of the state's eight finalists for Principal of the Year

Wall was named the principal of the year for the state's North Central region. He and the other seven regional finalists will find out April 1 who will be the 2010 North Carolina Principal of the Year.

Congratulations to John Wall and Fay Jones for being named Wake's top school-level administrators.

Wall, the principal of North Garner Middle, was named 2009 Principal of the Year last night. Jones, an assistant principal at Forest Pines Elementary, was named 2009 Assistant Principal of the Year.

Wake avoided what could have been a PR problem by not giving the award to Barwell Road Elementary School Principal Annice Williams, one of five finalists. Barwell has the lowest passing rate on state exams of any Wake elementary school.

Wake has announced its finalists for principal and assistant principal of the year.

The Principal of the Year finalists are Mary Page of Bugg Elementary, Annice Williams of Barwell Elementary, Teresa Winstead of Durant Road Elementary, John Wall of North Garner Middle and Edward McFarland of Fuquay-Varina High.

The Assistant Principal of the Year finalists are Melissa Blackmon of Willow Springs Elementary, Lisa Brown of Leesville Road Elementary, Edna Fay Jones of Forest Pines Elementary, Christopher Coby of Wendell Middle and Robert Matheson of Apex High.

School board members are miffed at the fallout from their decision not to do a study on the diversity policy.

During Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting, board members argued that they weren't against a study, per se. Board member Beverley Clark said the problem was that the question was framed in a way that was unanswerable.

Board members Horace Tart and Ron Margiotta had wanted staff to see if students who were reassigned from North Garner Middle School to West Lake Middle School for diversity reasons are now doing better academically.