The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded the Boston Public Schools with a $13.6 million dollar grant to assist in the restructuring into small learning communities. This grant was awarded nearly one year after the Foundation awarded a half-million dollar grant to jump start TechBoston Academy, the first BPS school to be structured and tested as a small learning community. See Globe article below for full story:
CITY SCHOOLS GET $13.6M GATES GRANT
By Anand Vaishnav
Boston Globe Staff
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving the Boston public schools $13.6 million to speed up the transformation of the city's struggling high schools from large, impersonal institutions to smaller, more humane campuses of specialized schools.
The donation, one of the largest ever received by the district, will be paid over four years. It will help 7,500 students at 19 Boston high schools, which will include five new small schools the money will help create. The award gives a national boost to an elusive piece of Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant's agenda: overhauling high schools that have tried for years to boost achievement, curb violence, and keep students from dropping out.
The grant will pay for teacher training, develop schools-within-schools, and link what students learn to internships in the community, officials said yesterday.
Payzant, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and four local groups that will help administer the grant announced it yesterday at the Dorchester Education Complex - formerly Dorchester High School, one of the city's most troubled high schools; next year it will be split into three smaller, independent high schools focusing on business, public service, and technology.
The grant represents the second multimillion-dollar donation for Boston public schools from the Gates Foundation, the 3 1/2-year-old philanthropic organization founded by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda. In 2001, the foundation along with the Carnegie Corp. gave the district $8 million for high school restructuring.
"It's about rigorous academic standards, it's about relationships, and it's about relevance - making learning relevant to what's going on in this world," said Raymond J. McNulty, education program director for the foundation, which aims to improve global health and education efforts.
The Gates Foundation invited the Boston public schools to apply for the grant, said Jonathan Palumbo, a school department spokesman.
Payzant said the money will expand his vision of a 21st-century high school education throughout a district better known for excellence at its three elite exam schools rather than for the large high schools that teach thousands more students.
The effort includes small "academies" at many high schools that target a certain population or subject matter - for example, a ninth-grade academy at East Boston High School.
But the bolder initiative is the breaking down of large campuses, such as the former South Boston High School, into three independent schools with their own specialties, budgets, and headmasters.
In addition, the grant will help create more of the smaller, nurturing high schools in Boston that have surged in demand, including a school for new immigrants and one for over-age ninth-graders. The district has about 18,300 high school students.
Nationally, the small-schools movement has emerged as one of the most popular ways to turn around big-city high schools by trying to make them more personal. New York City, Chicago, and Denver have opened smaller high schools or schools-within-schools.
But the movement is too new to measure whether it has helped improve test scores and performance, Hallett said. A report by the non-profit research groups, SRI International and the American Institutes for Research, which evaluated the Gates Foundation's donations for smaller high schools, found that the first year of such efforts primarily went toward helping students and teachers adjust to the new format. The report also noted the importance of teacher involvement in the reshaping of the schools.
In Boston, the teachers union has butted heads with the school department over teachers' seniority rights at the new Dorchester Education Complex, a battle some fear could slow the initiative.
"We're happy that the Gates Foundation donated the money and resources, but on the other hand, the protection of our rights is essential to making progress," Boston Teachers Union president Richard Stutman said.
The task also will be more difficult due to financial woes that require schools to slash budgets and lay off teachers. The Gates grant will not replace laid off teachers, Payzant said, but will let schools pay teachers stipends for training or hire academic "coaches."
The Boston-based nonprofit Jobs for the Future will be the fiscal agent for the Gates grant, working with the Boston Plan for Excellence, the Boston Private Industry Council, and the Center for Collaborative Education.
Small high schools are quickly becoming a favorite of some students. The new TechBoston Academy, which opened last year, will have just 140 ninth-graders and 10th- graders this fall at the Dorchester Education Complex.
"We have better relationships with our teachers," said TechBoston sophomore Karen Thomas, 15. "If we're not doing so well, we can sit down and have a conversation with the principal and our teacher."
Payzant noted that 82 percent of students who remained in the class of 2003 in Boston's high schools passed the MCAS test required for graduation, a figure he hopes to improve through smaller campuses.
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