Wake County's Board of Education has been recognized by the National School Boards Association for "outstanding commitment and service to diversity". Board Chair Kevin Hill presented the award to the board, saying it was "one of his proudest moments in his career with the Wake County Public School System."

"When I received the plaque, I credited Ms. Rosa Gill for her leadership and initiative as chair the past two years," said Hill. "Along with the teachers and staff who make this happen daily for our children."

Diversity has been the hot-button issue throughout the school board campaign and Wake's current policy of student assignment based in part on maintaining socioeconomic diversity in schools stands to change dramatically when new board members take office in December.

But current board member Ron Margiotta said diversity is not the only issue facing Wake County.

"Diversity is just one symptom of the overall sickness in the school system that has to be cured," he said. "It's a matter of just listening to people, not being so arrogant."

Margiotta urged the board today to respond to parent and community leaders' concerns over the siting of Forest Ridge High School by suspending work immediately. Construction officials have said that even two weeks more of delays on pre-construction planning could delay the opening of a new high school in the northern part of the county. Margiotta says he does not believe it.

"This site has been bad from the beginning," he said. "We never involved the community leaders, different community leaders, elected leaders from Rolesville, Wake Forest, who objected to the site. We've never addressed their concerns. And there are some serious traffic problems on Forestville Road."

Margiotta said the school board should not spend any more money on the Forest Ridge site - also known as H6 - until after they hear from county commissioners on alternative sites. As for the potential delay in opening a new high school in northern Wake, he suggests the board could house students in the new middle school slated for Rolesville.

A twist for community advocates came in the full board meeting today when school administrators announced that they will be using a SAS-developed data management program to evaluate student achievement.

Members of the Wake Schools Community Alliance argued as recently as September that Wake should take advantage of the free program that is being used by almost every school district in the state. Wake Schools had argued that its own Evaluation and Research Department already provided similar data for use by principals and teachers.

Dr. Bill Sanders, of the SAS EVAAS group, told board members today that Wake's method of adjusting student measurements based on race or socioeconomic status provides skewed results.

"When you start adjusting for that, it's going to make the child from the impoverished household appear to be doing better than they really are," said Sanders.

Wake's Chief Academic Officer Donna Hargens told board members that passwords would be given to all principals to provide confidential access the EVAAS website and information.