Gates Foundation Gives $350 Million to Education Programs Over the Next 3 Years

March 1, 2000

Gates Foundation Gives $350 Million to Education Programs Over the Next 3 Years

By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK

EATTLE, Feb. 29 -- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will spend $350 million over the next three years on education programs, foundation officials said today.

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The initiative would start mostly with grants in Washington, the couple's home state, the officials said, but would eventually spread across the country.
The bulk of the money is expected to go to public schools to help teachers enroll in training programs on integrating high technology with the classroom and to assist individual schools and school districts experimenting with new approaches to learning. The grants were to be formally announced to Washington state educators on Wednesday.
The money represents a significant infusion of cash for the state, where roughly $6 billion a year is spent on public education. The grants would initially be made to about 140 schools and at least 10 school districts across Washington.
The foundation's assets have soared in recent years to about $21 billion due to gifts from the Microsoft Corporation chief executive and his wife, and it is now the wealthiest philanthropic foundation in the world.

The grants follow large pledges by the foundation to international vaccine programs, scholarships for minority students and programs to bring computers and Internet access to schools and libraries in poor communities around the nation.
While details were still being worked out, the money would be divided into four areas, foundation officials said.

Grants totaling $100 million would be available "to ensure that administrators across the nation have access to quality leadership development, focusing on improving student learning through technology," the foundation said.

Another $70 million would be available for teacher training, with about $45 million going to about 1,000 teachers in Washington state in each of the next three years.
Grants totaling $30 million would be available for schools.
The remaining $150 million would be spent on about 30 school districts, beginning with 10 in Washington State.
The Gates gift is one in a series of high-profile donations to public education by private philanthropies and individuals, many with an emphasis on training programs. Other examples are the more than $700 million committed to public schools in recent years by the Annenberg Foundation, and a $100 million gift for training superintendents, principals and teachers in urban school systems made last year by Eli Broad, chairman of Sun America, a financial services company based in Los Angeles.
In 1998, the Albertson Foundation, a charitable trust in Boise, Idaho, whose assets come from a supermarket fortune, announced a three-year pledge of $110 million in grants to public schools in Idaho. While dwarfed in size by other national grants, it was described as the largest per-school commitment ever -- about $176,000 for every one of the state's public schools.