Hillsborough school board accepts $100M Gates grant

Hillsborough County school board members this afternoon unanimously voted to accept a $100-million education grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Now, the proposal for a seven-year partnership between Hillsborough schools and the Seattle-based philanthropic organization goes back to the Gates foundation, which has committed to spending $500 million nationwide for research on what makes teachers more effective.

The foundation is expected to announce the awards Thursday.

The ultimate purpose of the project is to drastically improve the nation's high school graduation rate, which stands at about 71 percent. In Florida, that rate teeters between 57.7 percent and 71 percent, depending on sources.

Hillsborough County Public Schools reported an 80 percent graduation rate in its 2008 annual report.

The district, the eighth largest in the nation, is the largest of the four being considered by the Gates foundation. The Pittsburgh and Memphis school districts and a consortium of charter schools in Los Angeles also are vying for foundation dollars.

Omaha Public Schools dropped out of the program last month after learning the city would have to come up with another $40 million in matching funds.

Hillsborough's proposal calls for the district to match the $100 million provided by the Gates foundation. The money will be doled out over a seven-year period and closely monitored by foundation officials.

It will cost the district roughly $32 million a year to sustain the plan once the grant ends, school officials have said.

Hillsborough hopes to create a new teacher mentoring and evaluation program that would take 200 to 300 teachers with a proven track record of high-achieving students out of the classroom and make them mentors to new teachers.

Those mentors would help evaluate teachers - a process that is done now by principals.

The grant would help hire replacements for those mentors, who would return to the classroom in two to three years while others serve as mentors.

The district also wants to create a new incentive program that ties pay increases to student achievement but moves beyond test scores, Superintendent MaryEllen Elia has said.

The district cannot replace the state-mandated Merit Award Program, though. Known as MAP, that program rewards teachers based on students' academic successes.