11/19/2009
HILLSBOROUGH SCHOOLS WIN $100M GRANT FROM GATES FOUNDATION
By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR, The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA - Hillsborough County schools have won $100 million to overhaul how teachers are trained and evaluated, with the hopes of increasing high school graduation rates.
The school board voted Tuesday to accept a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but did not get the official word until Thursday that it would receive the money. Foundation officials, including Melinda Gates, announced in a conference call that Hillsborough was among four recipients nationally.
The four recipients will receive $290 million, with Hillsborough getting the highest amount.
"Teachers matter more to student achievement, more than any other factor inside our school buildings," Melinda Gates said in this afternoon's conference call.
The funds will be parceled out during a seven-year period, with the first installment of $6 million expected by Dec. 3. Hillsborough also must match the Gates money for the grant's duration and expects to pay about $32 million annually after the grant ends to sustain the plan. The district hopes to use money budgeted for staff development for part of its contribution.
The eighth-largest district in the nation, Hillsborough is the biggest of the four grant winners. The others are Pittsburgh, Pa.; Memphis, Tenn.; and a group of charter schools in Los Angeles.
The Seattle-based foundation is striving to improve student achievement and better prepare them for college by making sure they have effective teachers. Hillsborough plans to use the grant money to develop an incentive program that ties teacher pay increases to student achievement beyond relying solely on test scores.
The program also would create extensive mentoring, removing 200 to 300 successful teachers from classrooms and setting them up as mentors to new teachers. The grant would help pay for their replacements, although the mentors would return to the classroom in two or three years and another group of mentors would step in.
The grant is the largest grant a public school district has ever received for K-12 education, according to the Hillsborough Education Foundation.
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