Gates Foundation Gives $18 Million to Train Principals, Vice Principals

Maintaining that achievement gains must start at the top of every school, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation kicked in $18 million Monday to provide leadership training for all of California’s 15,000 principals and vice principals by 2004.

The grant, which Gov. Gray Davis and a Gates Foundation official announced at a Westchester elementary school, will supplement $45 million the state has committed under a principal-training law Davis signed last month.

Acknowledging that his focus since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has shifted to public safety, Davis said that “my passion continues to be education reform.”

The Gates money, he said, would cover all but a fraction of the school districts’ costs for the required training in leadership skills. It would also allow an expansion of the three-year program to cover training for superintendents and private-school principals.

Speaking to an attentive audience of fifth-graders, parents and state and local officials at Loyola Village Elementary School, Davis explained that the combined $63 million in funding would cover 80 hours of training and 80 hours of follow-up consultation for each administrator. That is double the training time he has authorized for reading and math teachers during his administration, Davis noted.

“This will be some of the most broadly focused principal training in America,” Davis said.

Training to Cover Key Management Areas

The training will cover six key aspects of an administrator’s job. Those include the management of school finances and personnel, the use of instructional materials geared to the state’s content standards and the use of technology to improve instruction.

Started by Bill Gates, the Microsoft Corp. mogul and multibillionaire, and his wife, Melinda, the Seattle-based foundation has been making a big splash in education circles with grants to fund projects from training to high school reform.

California is the last state to receive a Gates grant for technology and leadership training for top administrators. The organization has pledged more than $120 million to support training for an estimated 83,000 principals and superintendents.

“This is the largest leadership development grant we’ve made,” Tom Vander Ark, the foundation’s executive director of education, said of the California donation.

Roy Romer, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said the grant shows a recognition that well-trained teachers alone are not enough to get the job done.

“A good principal is one who knows when good instruction occurs . . . and can manage schools so that happens,” Romer said. The district has more than 1,000 principals and vice principals.

Gates Money to Be Matched

Under the state program, school districts will get $3,000 for each school administrator trained, an amount to be matched with $1,000 from the district. The Gates money will cover all the district matching funds needed to train principals and half the district amount needed to train vice principals.

The Gates portion will also provide $375,000 per year for two years to support the training of superintendents. In addition, private schools will be able to tap the fund for $1,000 per principal.

To be eligible for the program, districts will have to use trainers approved by the state Board of Education, said John Mockler, the board’s executive director. Those could include UC programs or private companies.

Also on Monday, the Gates Foundation announced a five-year, $15-million grant to support school reform in San Diego. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation will give $7.5 million over two years to the effort.