Questions remain on how Hillsborough can afford Gates grant

The euphoria has given way to hard questions as Hillsborough County school officials start carrying out the proposals that landed them a historic $100 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The school district has worked to downplay one question - where the local share will come from to carry out the grant's goal of overhauling teacher training, evaluations and pay during the next seven years.

But the question isn't going away. And semantics isn't helping.

The district and the Gates foundation refuse to call it a "match," even though Hillsborough's winning bid pledged at least $102 million in local dollars. Call it a contribution, the district has said, emphasizing that mostly it means shifting existing money around, not raising new money.

"That's still a match,'' said pharmacist Stacy White of Valrico, a school board candidate for District 4 and father of three.

"I fully support having the best teachers in the classroom doing the best teaching," White said. "But the district went into this with a lot of unanswered questions. That is what really concerns me, especially on the financial end.''

It's more than semantics to teachers, whose salaries were frozen this year to offset a budget shortfall. Some wonder why they didn't get a raise if the district has extra money, said Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association.

"They think, 'You're cheating me,''' Clements said.

One thing is for sure in Clements' mind: The district won't be cutting the money it now spends on teacher salaries to match the Gates grant.

Still, during a teachers meeting this month at Chamberlain High School to discuss the grant, one teacher asked, "What cuts will be made each year to match the funds to the Gates grant?''

Standing at the podium, David Steele, the district's information technology chief, took a deep breath.

"This is not new money," he replied, ticking off possible sources of the local contribution. "We were going to spend that money anyway."

Those programs, it turns out, align with the goals of the Gates initiative. Still, the question isn't going away.

"Who's actually going to be impacted by reallocating these funds?'' asked Scott Barrish, another school board candidate, running in District 6.

Schools Superintendent MaryEllen Elia has said nothing will be lost in shifting the money.

The district has seven years to identify the local contribution, which amounts to about $14.5 million a year, Elia said during a workshop this month where she addressed the word "match.'' That amounts to less than half of 1 percent of Hillsborough's annual budget of $3 billion.

The local contribution could end up being even less, Elia said. At the same meeting, though, Steele estimated the district's contribution could be $3 million more than the initial pledge of $102 million.

Shifting funding from existing programs will leave the district with an estimated $30 million to raise during the next seven years, said School Board member April Griffin.

The district's grant department on average procures about $30 million a year in grants, administrators have said. The Hillsborough Education Foundation, which is administering the Gates grant, typically raises another $5 million to $6 million a year, leaders say.

There's also federal Race to the Top dollars, Griffin said, estimated to be at least $24 million if Florida's proposal for the federal economic stimulus money is accepted, Griffin said.

"If Florida gets it, Hillsborough County will likely get a lot of it for sure," she said. "But if we don't, it's not going to hurt us. We're committed to these changes."

A spokesman for the Gates Foundation said no hard and fast match is required of districts that were awarded the grants in November. Hillsborough's was the largest - the largest private grant ever, in fact, to a public school district.

"The districts had to show that they had a credible and comprehensive plan to fund the project," foundation spokesman Chris Williams said in an e-mail interview. "They did not necessarily have to show that they had all of the money 'in the bank.' ''

But the district must meet the foundation's expectations or risk losing the grant.

"Of course, I'm concerned for them," said state Sen. Ronda Storms. "But it's like watching someone swing for the bleachers. You want them to be able to do it."

The grant is new and daring, but it isn't something to fear, said Storms, a Valrico Republican who sits on the Senate's Education Pre-K-12 committee.

If anything, Storms said, the Gates grant gives the district the credibility to try something radically different to improve education.

"It's a safe strategy to say, 'We're not going for it,' '' Storms said. "Safe strategy gets ... us what we're already doing. Safe strategy is just not good enough.''