Hillsborough school district celebrates $100 million grant

It's no small feat winning $100 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So Hillsborough County public schools should be celebrating, said the foundation's education director, Vicki Phillips, during a reception Thursday at Jefferson High School.

"We would not be making this effort if we felt we were building on an unsteady foundation," she told a crowd of educators, school administrators, state legislators and students.

But the hard work must begin, Phillips said, as the district embarks on a seven-year experiment to put the best teachers possible in the classroom.

And then the district is "going to have to stick with this," she said.

Hillsborough was one of four school districts to receive the grant, part of the foundation's Intensive Partnership Project for Empowering Effective Teachers. The grant will allow Hillsborough to create an extensive mentoring program for one-on-one teacher training in the classroom as well as weekly observation for two years.

In addition, teacher evaluations that now rely on student performance will be linked to mentoring and professional development. School administrators also want to raise requirements for tenure and refine performance pay.

"It's all about the importance of teachers," Phillips said.

But it should be noted that teachers are not the problem, said Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association, which helped apply for the grant.

"There are no simple answers to the very complex question of how to improve education in our schools," Clements said.

Other speakers at the event included former school board Chairwoman Carol Kurdell, schools Superintendent MaryEllen Elia, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, Education Commissioner Eric Smith and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

"We're not having just a chat about change," Weingarten said.

Hillsborough is talking about doing the hard work, she said, to look at how it hires, educates and evaluates teachers so that "all kids are not simply dreaming their dreams, but achieving them."

It's a plan that could have far-reaching results, Weingarten said.

"It's not an overstatement to say the nation is watching."

Hillsborough must match the $100 million grant, though funding sources have yet to be identified. School administrators estimate it will cost the district about $32 million a year to sustain the project once the grant is gone.

The district received the first $6 million allotment this week. The money will be administered by the Hillsborough County Education Foundation.

The reception, which was catered by local students, was paid for by the Gates Foundation.