Portland Public Schools has won a grant worth $11 million over seven years to help students in grades six through high school who are slated to attend Roosevelt, Madison and Jefferson high schools get on track for college success.

The high schools and the middle schools that feed them will join a national network of mentoring programs that already includes scores of Oregon schools. Oregon State University currently operates the mentoring and college-readiness program in 16 schools in rural areas and small towns around the state plus those schools' feeder schools.

Called Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs and shorthanded as GEAR UP, the national network of mentoring programs is backed by the U.S. Department of Education. It focuses on equipping low-income students with the awareness, high expectations and academic skills they need to aspire to college and to succeed when they get there.

In Portland, officials plan to hire college-age alumni from the three high schools to serve as mentors to the younger students. The program will also focus on helping students take advanced academic and career-technical courses to prepare them for college and careers. Portland's version of the program will be called Engage, Empower, and Elevate and shorthanded as E3, district spokesman Mike Tokito said.

The alumni will be hired beginning next spring and will be trained during spring and summer, Tokito said. They'll begin working with students next fall.

During the initial year, sixth- and seventh-graders will be chosen to take part. The program's young adult mentors will continue working with the teens throughout high school and into college, Tokito said.

The school district won the grant in collaboration with Portland State University, Unite Oregon, Portland Community College, Campus Compact of Oregon, and Parent Teacher Home Visits. The latter group believes home visits should be a voluntary meeting between two equal partners with common goals who come together outside the institutional setting of the school. It will help Portland Public Schools teachers meet with students' families to plan together to get teens to college.

Program manager Angela Numom, who wrote the grant application, said the college students won't be matched as one-on-one mentors to individual middle school and high school students. Rather, she said, they will work with teachers to change the vibe of the entire classroom.

The mentors will serve as "consistent role models, present in their classrooms, encouraging their engagement, and sharing their personal stories of struggle and triumph," Numon said.

The program will also hire and train some parents to help empower fellow parents to help their teens prepare for, aspire to and succeed in college, she said. And it will provide intensive training, coaching, and support for teachers chosen to play lead roles at the schools.

-- Betsy Hammond