Tulsa, OK- The Tulsa Public Schools district is waiting to see if it will receive more than $70 million dollars over the next five years.
TPS is among 10 school districts from across the country vying for what's known as the Gates Grant.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving five school districts each somewhere in the neighborhood of $55 million dollars.
If awarded, the TPS system would receive funds from local sources also, estimated in the amount of $15 million or more, according to Dr. Keith Ballard, Superintendent for Tulsa Public Schools.
If chosen for the grant, the district would change the way teachers are paid to a performance-based salary scale.
Ballard says it's all about encouraging what he calls "effective teaching."
"It first of all starts with how we recruit teachers, how we retain teachers, how we train teachers, how we evaluate teachers, it's an extraordinary evaluation system," he said.
The need for this type of program, Dr. Ballard says, is the district's dismal college readiness rate which is at 7-percent currently.
If the program is implemented here in Tulsa, teachers would start out making $36,000 a year.
Dr. Ballard says this is well above the national average.
The district should know by August 17th whether it's among the top five school districts chosen for the program.
