Schoolboard votes to take Gates grant

One Hillsborough County School Board member called it "the largest grant in the history of mankind." Another described it as the "biggest and most prestigious."

Board members Tuesday unanimously voted to accept a $100 million, seven-year education grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Now the paperwork goes back to the Seattle-based organization, where Bill and Melinda Gates are expected to sign off on the agreement before announcing on Thursday that Hillsborough is one of three grant recipients across the country.

The foundation has committed $500 million to boldly changing the way teachers are "recruited, retained, rewarded and tenured," said spokesman Chris Williams.

Ultimately, the goal of the grants is to improve teacher effectiveness which, in turn, better prepares students for life after high school, whether that's college or a career.

Schools across the country will become "educational lighthouses" for our youth, said Don Shalvey, the foundation's senior program officer who attended Tuesday's school board meeting.

"Watch out world, Hillsborough is on the map," quipped school board member Doretha Edgecomb.

The district, the eighth-largest in the nation, is the biggest of the four being considered by the Gates foundation. The Pittsburgh school district has an $85 million proposal; Memphis schools requested $100 million, and a consortium of charter schools in Los Angeles also is vying for foundation dollars, though that amount was not released Tuesday.

Omaha Public Schools district dropped out of the running last month after learning it would have to come up with nearly $40 million more in matching funds than anticipated.

Hillsborough's proposal calls for $100 million from Gates to be matched by the district. The money will be doled out over seven years and be 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 - something principals now do. 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 grant is the largest ever given to a public school district for K-12 education, said Bill Hoffman, president of the Hillsborough Education Foundation.

"This," Superintendent MaryEllen Elia said, "has been a long time coming."