The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world's largest private donors, will give Oakland $9.5 million to further the "small school" movement in the city, officials announced Wednesday.

Gates' gift is the largest private donation ever made to education in Oakland.

"I've never seen an actual check with that many zeros," said Steve Jubb, executive director of the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools, which administers the Gates grant.

In 2000, the Gates Foundation gave Oakland about $8 million, which was used to start a new small high school, create a number of elementary schools and break up two large East Oakland high schools.

"We're at a critical point in American education," Jubb said Wednesday. "The (low) graduation rate and the lack of preparedness for college have been a dirty secret for a long time. This is a war every day for the lives and souls of young people."

To win that war, many cities across the country have joined a movement that says smaller is better, at least when it comes to large, crowded, urban campuses.

The "small school" movement, which began in Harlem, has been fully embraced by education leaders in Oakland, where BayCES and local grass-roots group Oakland Community Organizations worked for years to put the city on the forefront of small-school reforms.

Gates' previous grant helped make Oakland's Fremont High School an example of those reforms last year, when the massive, 1,800-student campus was divided into six smaller schools specializing in subjects such as architecture, arts and media. Teachers and students say the more personalized, more autonomous schools will lead to higher attendance and more learning.

"Students are really going to know that education and going to college are big parts of their lives," student Darielle Davis said at a news conference Wednesday.

Davis, a freshman at McClymonds High School, said she wants to be a district attorney some day.

"I think small schools will really help me get there," she said.

Gates, who is repeatedly listed as the world's richest person by Forbes magazine, has been a huge supporter of small schools nationwide.

The Gates Foundation has funded the creation of 700 small high schools and has backed reforms at 700 existing high schools, said Tom Vander Ark, executive director of education for the foundation.

Oakland was the first place Gates sponsored high school reforms, and the city has become a model for other reformers across the country, Vander Ark said.

The foundation has given more than $1 billion to K-12 education in the United States and has provided more than $1 billion in scholarships. Gates also gives millions of dollars to fight AIDS in developing countries.

Gates' latest donation to Oakland "will help us improve the high schools on a concrete level," said Oakland schools State Administrator Randolph Ward. "It will make a real difference."

The money will go to small school reforms at Castlemont and McClymonds high schools and will help start a small high school in East Oakland, BayCES leaders said.

Part of the grant could go to Berkeley High School, and part could help create an aviation-centered high school at Oakland International Airport.

BayCES also recently got a $350,000 grant from the Wayne and Gladys Valley Foundation to do high school reform in Oakland.

Part of Gates' 2000 donation helped open Life Academy, a small high school in the Fruitvale district.

Students said Wednesday that Life Academy gives them the individual attention and sense of community missing from their former high schools.

"I think it allows kids like me a second chance," student Erika Van Eck said.

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