The grant is designed to focus specifically on two areas in the district—downtown San Jose and Blossom Valley, where desegregation and student achievement are considered imbalanced.

In order to achieve academic, socioeconomic and ethnic equality, Gunderson High School and Steinbeck Middle School will receive separate grants to incorporate into their curriculum an Integrated Technology in the Arts and Sciences, creating a new magnet that emphasizes the use of technology as an educational tool. All students will be provided with a laptop, and both teachers and students will receive training in computer applications.

Horace Mann Elementary School, Anne Darling Elementary School, Burnett Academy and San Jose High School will apply the grant funds toward their International Baccalaureate Program. Offered to high-achieving students, the International Baccalaureate Program emphasizes writing skills, second-language acquisition, mathematics and the integration of academic subjects.

And although the program has previously been available at the middle school and high-school levels, this is the first time it will be established in elementary classrooms.

According to Magnet Schools Project Director Norris Hill, who was one of the chief writers of the grant, the district faced stiff competition in receiving the money.

"The district is fortunate to win this award," he said. "Out of the 150 districts who applied for the grant, only 51 [districts] received funding."

Willow Glen magnets River Glen School and Hacienda Science/Environmental Magnet fell outside the required criteria, Hill said.

The district develops magnet schools in areas it considers to be heavily segregated in order to attract students from outside the neighborhood. Willow Glen schools do not qualify as magnet schools because they are racially and socioeconomically balanced, Hill said.

But San Jose Unified School District Board member Carol Myers said she believes the district has been unfair in excluding Willow Glen schools, particularly Willow Glen Middle and Willow Glen High schools, from the magnet program. She said that the schools are not naturally desegregated because more than 40 percent of students are bused in from outside the neighborhood.

"We have repeatedly been the district's poor stepchild," she said. "The money does not follow our needy kids. It's not that we don't want these kids, but the desegregation money is not following them."

According to Hill, a teacher at Willow Glen High School from 1958 to 1969 and vice principal of curriculum and student activities from 1969 to 1974, he and his fellow grant writers tried to include Willow Glen Middle and Willow Glen High schools in the grant.

"By ethnicity, socioeconomic status and student achievement, the Willow Glen schools are in the middle range, so they are not fundable by the grant," he said. "The figures are what we have to use. I wanted to include Willow Glen Middle School and Willow Glen High School in the grant, but statistically I could not do it."

Yet six schools in the district will benefit from the fund that are provided by the federal government's Magnet Schools Assistance Program, which is part of the No Child Left Behind Act.

San Jose Unified School District spokeswoman Karen Fuqua said she was pleased with the educational and technological opportunities that the grant will make available to students and teachers. But she also emphasized that money from the grant is earmarked specifically for designated magnet schools and cannot be used to offset the district's budget deficit.