News Release

San Diego City Schools Communications Office
4100 Normal St.    San Diego, CA 92103    (619) 725-5578

November 5, 2001

SAN DIEGO CITY SCHOOLS RECEIVES $22.5 MILLION IN FOUNDATION FUNDING TO SUPPORT REFORMS

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation commits $15 million; William and Flora Hewlett Foundation $7.5 million

San Diego City Schools will receive $22.5 million in private funding over five years to support its Blueprint for Student Success. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced their joint support for the district's commitment to improving instruction and student achievement at a Carson Elementary appearance today (Monday, November 5).

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will give $15 million over five years; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation win give $7.5 million over two years. The Gates support is the largest non-government grant ever received by San Diego City Schools.

"San Diego is engaged in some of the most important work that a school district can undertake," said Tom Vander Ark, executive director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Great progress has already been made, but with better trained teachers and stronger leaders all students stand to benefit."

"The San Diego 'experiment' is thought by many observers to be the most promising example of large urban district school reform in America," said Marshall Smith, program officer for education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. "We hope that this work will serve as a model for other districts around the country and that others recognize that improving student achievement requires a hard and sustained effort within schools as well as strong public and private support."

In the spring of 2000, San Diego's board of trustees approved the district's comprehensive improvement plan, to focus on teaching and learning. The plan encompasses seven key elements, which the grants will help support:

• Improving instruction and putting more rigor into the curriculum, with powerful literacy and mathematics frameworks.
   

• Strengthening the leadership capability of principals through professional development.
   

• Enhancing the skills of teachers through ongoing, focused professional development and peer coaching.
   

• Providing more high-quality materials and books in the classroom.
   

• Giving students, when necessary, more time to learn through extensive, targeted intervention and retention programs, and expanded summer school offerings.
   

• Increasing parent and community involvement with Parent University, before- and after-school programs, preschool services, and other strategies.
   

• Marshalling data and information systematically to ensure district-wide accountability.

Already under the reforms, the district has put into place a literacy curricular framework across all grades, provided hundreds of hours of professional development to teachers based on research-grounded strategies, placed peer coach/staff developers in every school, established a leadership academy for training new administrators, implemented an extended day reading program, doubled summer school instruction, and set up specific classroom supports and classes for students needing more time to team.

"The grants from the Gates and Hewlett foundations are important for San Diego City Schools to be able to deepen its commitment to our mission: improving student achievement by supporting teaching and learning in the classroom," said Alan Bersin, superintendent of public education. "I speak for all in the district in thanking the foundations for recognizing the great importance attached to the success of our reforms."

San Diego City Schools is attracting national recognition for its efforts in improving urban public education. Earlier this fall, the district received $6 million from the National Science Foundation to boost mathematics and science curriculum and teaching, $8 million from the Carnegie Corp. and the Gates foundation to advance student achievement in high schools, and a $9 million grant under the federal government's Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative to improve student behaviors.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is working with schools and districts across the country to create more effective learning environments where all students achieve. This district support grant is one of 20 similar grants made within the last year and a half The foundation is led by Bill Gates' father, William H. Gates, Sr., and Patty Stonesifer, and has an asset base of $24.2 billion.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, incorporated as a private foundation in the state of California in 1966, was established by the late Palo Alto industrialist William R. Hewlett; his late wife, Flora Lamson Hewlett; and their eldest son, Walter B. Hewlett. The Foundation's broad purpose, as stated in the articles of incorporation, is to promote the well-being of mankind by supporting selected activities of a charitable nature, as well as organizations or institutions engaged in such activities.