Foundation to Fund 70 Small U.S. High Schools

California will get at least four new small high schools as part of a $40-million project by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, it was announced Tuesday.

The foundation, aiming to increase high school and college attendance nationwide, is donating the money to organizations that will create or redesign 70 small high schools around the country. The schools will be unusual in that students who attend them can earn both a high school diploma and a college associate’s degree or up to two years of college credit.

The National Council of La Raza, which is based in Washington, D.C., received $7.2 million to create 14 small high schools, all of which will operate under charters that confer a certain amount of autonomy. Four are to be in California, at least two of them in the Los Angeles area, said La Raza Deputy Vice President Lisa Navarrete.

The schools are intended to enroll no more than 400 students, and classes will have fewer than 20 students.

“Small schools have been proven to provide a more rigorous academic environment,” said Joe Cerrell, director of public affairs for the Gates foundation.

Each group getting a grant focuses on serving either low-income or minority communities.

“The foundation wants to focus on the kids who fall through the cracks in the system,” said Dag Vega, a spokesperson for the Gates foundation. “They’re mostly focusing on the kids that fall behind, the kids that drop out because the classes aren’t interesting.”

La Raza is a Latino civil rights organization that in the last two years has been working to build more charter schools.

“If [students] go to regular high school, a lot of the time it does not prepare them for college. And they end up dropping out of college,” Navarrete said.

Because of community involvement in charter schools, she said, she finds them “most promising for Latino students. Educators, community, parents--if there’s a commitment to help children to learn from all of these groups, it almost ensures that children will learn.”

Other organizations that received grants from the Microsoft founder and his wife are Jobs for the Future, Middle College High School Consortium, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Antioch University Seattle, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, SECME Inc. and Utah Partnership Foundation.