Gates donates money to build high schools

By Kristina Wong
Daily Bruin Contributor

Although the richest man in America never made it past a high
school diploma, his newest venture encourages students to go
beyond.

On March 19, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in
partnership with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Ford
Foundation, and W. K. Kellogg Foundation, will grant over $40
million toward the nationwide establishment of 70 college high
schools.

California will get at least four new schools, at least two of
them in the Los Angeles area.

These new high schools would not only issue a high school
graduation certificate, but two-year Associate of Arts degrees to
make the transition from high school to college smoother.

Modeled after high-tech colleges such as Georgia Tech and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the schools will have an
emphasis in the sciences. Yet unlike these colleges, the schools
will be public with open enrollment and have as few as 400 students
each.

Bard High School Early College in New York also served as a
model for these new schools. The school had received $1 million
from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last September when the
school opened. The 11th and 12th grade teachers have Ph.D.s, and
the schools curriculum consists of writing, math, sciences, gym and
“Doing art” ““ which includes jazz, chamber, and
percussion ensemble, chorus and studio art classes.

“Students are doing really well, and the school is on a
path towards being self-sustaining,” said Bard College
spokesperson Mark Primoff.

So far funds for the school have come from fund-raisers and
“private philanthropy,” he added, referring to the
Foundation, “The ultimate goal is to be self
sustaining.”

Each donating foundation or corporation will use their funds to
build local schools.

“The aim is to eliminate academic inefficiency, and
provide a seamless progression to college, hopefully, where
students don’t lose momentum around their senior year,”
said Ed Aebischer, of South-Eastern Consortium for Minorities in
Engineering. SECME will allocate $3.2 million to eight individual
school systems.

Aebischer said the “Gates money” will pay for
planning, development and design of the schools but not buildings,
which existing school systems will be provide.

“The money is part of the incentive (for existing school
systems’ participation.) This is an exceptional
opportunity,” Aebischer said.

Like each of the eight intermediaries, SECME, Inc. has
designated local “partners” for each new school
location.

“We are hopeful that the school districts of that
community would be reflected in that school,” says Rich
Kendall, Utah deputy for education administration.

While other organizations may gear students towards the job
industry, Kendall said Utah’s new schools would gear students
to transfer to universities, public and private.

According to Kendall, since the new schools will be public
charter schools, independent from the state school districts and
statutes, they will be regulated by independent boards.

The new schools have financial support from their respective
state governments.

The outlook for these schools are unknown, but Primoff said the
surge of interest in these schools show that there is a real thirst
for new ideas on how to better educate American high school
students.