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The "Grade Doctor" won't be making any house calls to Wake County.

As noted in today's article, school administrators have broken off contract negotiations with education consultant Ken O'Connor, who calls himself "The Grade Doctor." Administrators had been hoping to hire him to speak with teachers as part of the district's review of middle school and high school grading practices.

At a cost of as much as $6,000 a day for up to eight days, the contract negotiations had become controversial.

The response has been really overwhelming so far to replace Rosa Gill on the school board.

As of Thursday afternoon, school administrators said they hadn't received a single application for the District 4 Southeast Raleigh vacancy on the school board. The deadline is noon on July 20th so there's still time.

The last time there was a vacancy, 10 people applied in 2001 for the opening in District 8 in southwest Wake. Applicants included a former Wake school board member, the president and president-elect of the Wake County PTA Council and the chairman of the Wake County Planning Board.

The John Locke Foundation is not exactly a great fan of the Wake school system, but they're showing the district some love on a new web site, NCTransparency.com.

Wake was graded today "the most transparent school system in the state" by the Locke Foundation, receiving a B. No other district got above a C.

"We've got to give Wake its due when it deserves it," said Terry Stoops, education policy analyst for the Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Raleigh.

It's probably appropriate that Rita Rakestraw will officially "kick off" her campaign tonight for the school board at a martial arts academy.

Rakestraw's kickoff event will be at 7 p.m. at Black Belt USA, 300 Black Belt World Drive in Knightdale. She's been campaigning since March but tonight's event coincides with the official start of the candidate filing period on Monday.

Starting at 8:30 a.m. Monday and running through noon on July 17, candidates can officially file with the Wake County Board of Elections for the four school board seats on this year's ballot.

Supporters of the diversity policy may have found their candidate in the District 9 school board race in Cary.

According to the latest edition of the Independent, Lois Nixon has told the weekly that she'll announce her candidacy for the open District 9 seat. Nixon is past president of Environmental Educators of N.C. and former coordinator of the Keep America Beautiful program in Wake County.

According to the Indy, Nixon is also active on the education committee of WakeUP Wake County. That group has been a vocal supporter of the school system.

UPDATE

Included link to this week's Indy article. 

The hype is already beginning in school districts across the state about how students did so much better this year on the state's testing program.

The improved performance shouldn't be much of a surprise considering how for the first time elementary and middle schools were allowed to count passing scores on retests. That fact got only a brief mention in some school district press releases.

(To be fair, you could get the info from Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools if you dug past the press release to click on the attachments.)

The former principal of Carver Elementary School in Wendell will have to appear in court to answer allegations she assaulted a student.

Allison Baker was served Thursday with a criminal summons of assaulting a child under 12, according to Phyllis Stephens, a spokeswoman for the Wake County Sheriff's Office.

Baker had resigned as principal on June 1 after having been suspended with pay May 22 for "negative interaction with a student," according to Michael Evans, a school system spokesman.

I've got some sad news to pass along.

Luther Johnson, most recently the former principal of Holly Springs High School, died Friday after a long illness. He was 39.

Johnson was also a past principal of Leesville Road Middle School and an assistant principal at Wakefield High School.

People aren't exactly rushing to fill the vacancy on the school board.

School officials say they hadn't received any applications as of Monday afternoon. You've got until noon on July 20th to get your application into the hands of the school district.

There are people who've expressed interest in filling the District 4 seat in Southeast Raleigh that was vacated when Rosa Gill left to join the General Assembly.