Kansas City, Mo. ? A $6.1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will help the Kansas City school district put into place a new reform program and create a new school.

School officials laud the grant as a step in the right direction for the district, which graduates fewer than 40 percent of its students. About $4 million of the grant money will go toward Achievement First, a reform effort the foundation hopes will double the graduation rate by 2010.

“Kansas City has got some of the worst graduation rates in the United States,” said Tom Vander Ark, the foundation’s executive director. “We are losing 60 percent of the (eighth-graders) in Kansas City. This is all about trying to help more kids graduate from high school ready for college and work.”

The remaining $2.1 million of the four-year grant will go toward creating a new sixth- through 12th-grade school at an existing building.

The Gates award is the largest foundation grant the district has ever received.

The district initially sought $4 million from the foundation to reform existing schools, but the foundation urged school officials to also start the new secondary school.

“We find new schools have many advantages,” Vander Ark said. “They are not easy, but they are easier than fixing big, struggling schools.”

Achievement First is a $10.8 million districtwide reform program designed to reshape relationships among parents, students and teachers. The premise is that improving those relationships will foster increased achievement.

The program will place high school students in career-themed small learning communities similar to colleges within a university. Staff members will be assigned 15 to 17 students and expected to meet several times a year with their parents.

Students will take only four classes per semester, but elective options will be limited.

Supporters say Achievement First will get more parents involved in their children’s education and increase test scores. Critics call it a “dumbed-down” approach that will do little more than put millions of dollars into consultants’ pockets.

Officials from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation approached district officials last year about a program similar to one the foundation was helping bankroll in Kansas City, Kan. School officials liked elements of the Kansas City, Kan., program, First Things First, but also saw some good ideas in a Topeka, Kan., program called Talent Development High Schools.

Achievement First blends elements of both of the Kansas programs.

The Kauffman Foundation has committed $14.2 million to the Kansas City, Kan., program, and the Missouri district thought it would get $7.3 million from Kauffman for Achievement First. But the foundation approved only $500,000.

Kauffman officials helped bring the school district and the Gates Foundation together. Vander Ark said the time was right for the district and Gates Foundation to become partners.

“We look for need and leadership and we found it in Kansas City,” he said. “We are encouraged by the plan we have put together. The needs are severe in Kansas City, Mo.”