Gates Foundation

A $20 million private investment in Baltimore's troubled high schools, announced yesterday with great hope and fanfare, really began more than a year ago with a single word. No. That is what the $24.2 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation flatly told city school officials in January 2001. Not that there wasn't a need. But the foundation, worried about wasting money, had heard bad things about the school system's past attempts at reform. That initial rejection did not deter Carmen V. Russo, the school system's chief executive officer since July 2000, and Pamela E. Johnson, the system's director of development and external relations.

Maryland's efforts to reel in up to $260 million in federal stimulus money aimed at education reform received a setback this week. The state did not get a competitive grant from the nonprofit Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help put together an application for the stimulus money, according to Maryland State Department of Education spokesman Bill Reinhard. The $4 billion in Race to the Top education money is the largest pot of federal money ever dedicated to education reform, and it is expected to spur states to make significant changes.

ALTHOUGH THE $2.25 million grant from a charity controlled by Microsoft Corp.founder Bill Gates isn't the largest gift to Johns Hopkins' School of Hygiene and Public Health from a private source, the contribution is significant: It will support public health initiatives that have made Hopkins revered in corners of the world where people have never heard of Baltimore.The Gates gift, spread over five years, will fund a Family Planning Leadership Education Institute to help health care leaders in developing countries design, administer and evaluate their own family planning efforts.

State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick finally seems to have seen the light regarding the sweeping changes Maryland must make to improve its schools - even though it took a stiff rebuff from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to deliver the message. If officials get serious about reforms that will keep Maryland competitive with other states, then it may be the best rejection letter we've ever received. Last week, the foundation turned down Maryland's application for a grant to help it seek millions of dollars in federal Race to the Top funds, money earmarked for states with a serious commitment to school reform.

The financier announced that he intended to give the bulk of his $44 billion personal fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing." Warren Buffett

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is awarding $40 million to the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health to expand a program to improve reproductive health around the globe. The 10-year-grant - which officials called the sixth largest in Hopkins' history - will go to the school's Institute for Population and Reproductive Health. The institute trains leaders of reproductive health programs in the developing world, where complications from pregnancy and childbirth are a major cause of disease and death.

EBOCHA, Nigeria --Justice Eta, 14 months old, held out his tiny thumb. An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

WASHINGTON -- Bill Gates' mega-philanthropy, the $22-billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is taking on a mega-institution -- America's high schools with multi-thousand student enrollments. In a series of announcements made from Alaska to Rhode Island, the Gates Foundation last week announced an initial $56 million in grants to start and support model schools that offer small, personalized learning environments. The timing couldn't be more opportune. The horrific 1999 shooting at Colorado's Columbine High School triggered many second thoughts about America's big, comprehensive high schools.

The announcement that Maryland schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick will retire in June after 20 years on the job marks a watershed for public education in the state, whose history could fairly be divided into two eras — before and after Ms. Grasmick. Her extraordinary leadership raised the bar on what was possible for schools across the state and won Maryland national recognition as an education powerhouse. She's been called "the heart and soul" of Maryland schools. Whoever succeeds her will have big shoes to fill.