Joel Stephens of Thomas Financial was kind enough to share this story with me about Hillsborough County School District, which I reproduce on this blog:
Hillsborough County School District (HCSD) has been awarded $100 Million dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is the largest private gift ever made to a single K-12 district. The Gates Foundation ultimately selected four districts across the country (Tampa, Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles) to award a significant educational grant.
The initiative is titled “Intensive Partnerships to Empower Effective Teachers.” This seven-year effort, which will ultimately have $200 Million invested in Hillsborough County, will focus on improving student achievement by ensuring each student has high quality teachers. Other than parents, a teacher has the single most influential impact on a student’s success within our education system, and this initiative is laser focused on changing the way teachers are mentored, evaluated, paid, etc. Hillsborough County is a large district (8th largest in the country) which will be an incubator to develop processes which can then be replicated in school districts across the country.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and their team of professionals are not just “throwing money” at a broad need. They have been very specific in this, as well as other initiatives, such as curing Malaria and AIDS, and have done an enormous amount of due diligence to determine what makes the highest impact before they award a grant. In addition, part of the requirement is that their team of professionals stays intricately involved. For instance, in this initiative with the HCSD, a leader from the Gates Foundation is actually moving to Tampa for the next seven years, and other professionals from the Foundation will be visiting at a minimum of every month along the way.
Thank you Gates Foundation for helping to improve our Community!
