PORTLAND - Three more of Oregon's largest high schools - two in Portland and one in Central Point - will morph into smaller "schools-within-a-school," using grants partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Roosevelt and Madison High Schools in Portland, and Crater High School in Central Point, none of which earned a grade over "satisfactory" on state report cards last year, join 12 Oregon schools and schools-to-be already receiving grants from the $25 million initiative, which is also backed by Portland-based Meyer Memorial Trust.

The largest of the three schools, Crater High, will receive $1.1 million over the next four years to help cover the costs of converting from a comprehensive, traditional high school to the small schools model. Roosevelt and Madison will receive $620,000 and $775,000, respectively.

In the beginning, the money will mainly be spent on planning and professional development; the goal is to end up with smaller learning communities, where teachers and students have more personal relationships. Backers of small schools say they can help raise student achievement and reduce drop-out rates.

The small schools grants are targeted at schools that have more than 700 students, and where at least 25 percent of the students are either minorities or from a poor family. The three schools were chosen from among 10 applicants; 50 high schools in Oregon met the criteria and could have applied for the grant money.

Andrew Kelly, principal at Roosevelt High, said his school has already begun the small schools shift, but that the grant would cement their work.

"Small isn't enough; structural change isn't enough," he said. "We want to hone in on the instructional changes happening in the classroom on a daily basis."

A handful of the schools that had earlier been awarded the grant have already opened, often with the smaller schools arranged around specific themes; others are still in the planning stages, shooting for openings in fall of 2006 or 2007.

Eight of the schools previously awarded the grants are traditional large high schools that have already or will be subdividing into smaller "schools-within-schools," topping out at no more than 400 students each. They include schools in Portland, Lebanon, Eugene, Woodburn, Hillsboro, Newberg and both of the traditional high schools in Medford.

The four other earlier grants were given for start-from-scratch schools, like the Nixyaawii Charter School on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, or a bilingual performing arts academy in Eagle Point, where high school principal Mari Brabbin said plans are well under way.

"We've been to the East Coast, to the West Coast and in between with our staff, to conceptualize what a small high school looks like," she said, of the months since Eagle Point landed the grant.

With the backing of Gates, small schools have spread like wildfire. They are opening or off and running in 41 states.

But actually making the transition to a small school is uphill work, and far from an instant cure-all, some of the Oregon grant recipients said, especially with the knowledge that the grant money won't last forever, a concern in Oregon's uncertain budget climate.

At North Eugene High School, teachers and administrators visited some large high schools that weren't totally pleased with their conversion into smaller schools.

"Some worked, some didn't," said principal Peter Tromba. "The ones that didn't were pretty ugly. Schools were competing, staffs were fighting, there was lower student achievement. You can't bulldozer in, carve a school into four pieces, and just expect it will work."

North Eugene's concerns were well-publicized, and eventually led to an anonymous vote on whether the school should continue with the small schools transformation process.

It could have made the school among the first in the country to decline the Gates small schools money, but 72 percent of staff members voted to continue with the plan, and the rest of their $900,000 grant.

"It does point out how important it is to have your staff believe," Tromba said. "Your staff are the ones who will implement it for 10 or fifteen years of their career."

North Eugene's soul-searching helped scare off at least one potential candidate for the grant; staff members at Churchill High School in Eugene voted last week to take their school out of the running for the grant.

Backers of Oregon's small schools initiative plan to choose eight more schools to receive the grants, for an overall total of 24.

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