St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman delivered his annual State of the City address Monday, saving one of the juiciest announcements — a tidbit about the Central Corridor light-rail transit project — for midway through his speech.

Next Tuesday, he said, the Federal Transit Administration will sign the long-awaited “full funding grant agreement,” officially committing about $460 million in federal aid toward the $957 million project.

That agreement would be a jab in the eyes of the transit line’s critics, some of whom have taken the Metropolitan Council to task for proceeding with construction of the 11-mile route between downtown St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis without federal funding fully in place. State and local money will make up the other half of the project’s budget, and skeptics worried the federal match would never materialize.

Those worries are almost over. The Met Council, the metro’s regional planning agency, has invited a who’s who of transit proponents and state and county officials to attend the agreement signing at the Minnesota Department of Revenue.

Coleman said the signed agreement will cap 30 years of discussions about connecting the Twin Cities by train.

Jim McDonough, chairman of the Ramsey County Regional Rail Authority, called Coleman’s announcement a headline grabber.

“That’s all the federal money,” said McDonough, a Ramsey County commissioner. “It’s a huge deal.”

The morning ceremony will take place overlooking a segment of Robert Street gutted for the priciest public works project in state history. Construction of the line, which will run along Washington and University avenues, was about 12 percent complete by the end of February, Coleman said.

Trains are expected to roll beginning in 2014.

The mayor highlighted what an urban light-rail corridor could mean in terms of educational and professional opportunities for young people from some of St. Paul’s most economically challenged neighborhoods.

“Even in the Central Corridor, education will be at the core of our mission,” Coleman said. “A strong transit system will allow children to get from their school to an afterschool program, downtown for an internship or, after graduating from high school, to one of the many colleges or universities connected to the corridor.”

Coleman delivered his remarks before an audience of several hundred city residents at the Oxford Community Center on Lexington Parkway, in the heart of a federal “Promise Neighborhood.” The 250-block program, still in its planning stages, encompasses the Frogtown and Summit-University areas, where city organizers are teaming with schools and nonprofits to deliver a host of school-readiness and career-planning services to low- and moderate-income families.

Coleman said President Barack Obama’s administration made a major commitment to the effort just last week by setting aside $30 million for Promise Neighborhoods across the country.

“It is rooted in the idea that kids learn best when their families are healthy and when there is stability at home and at school,” Coleman said. “The Promise Neighborhood will integrate in- and out-of-school time with family and community support — from cradle-to-career.”

Among the Promise Neighborhood efforts already under way, the city has partnered with the YWCA of St. Paul for the “Road to Success” program, which is training 50 St. Paul residents, most of them African-American men, for the Class B commercial driver’s license test. That would set them up for jobs paying at least $30,000 to $40,000, or allow them to go on to complete further study toward the Class A license to become independent truck operators at even higher wages.

Much of Coleman’s remarks touched on education, including studies showing the gap in test scores between white students and students of color in St. Paul to be among the highest in the nation. He said St. Paul is well aware of the gap and its efforts to confront the problem have earned the city national recognition as “an education city.”

He said the massive school restructuring program undertaken by school Superintendent Valeria Silva is aggressive but essential.

The controversial “Strong Schools, Strong Communities” effort splits the city into six districts emphasizing neighborhood schools over busing, and de-emphasizing the popular concept of magnet schools that draw students from throughout the city. The restructuring proposal was approved by the school board in March.

“There was understandably a great deal of angst among parents whose children will be affected by the new structure,” Coleman said. “Change is difficult. But the status quo is unacceptable. We do no service to any of our children when we acknowledge the wide achievement gap but don’t undertake the dramatic systemic change to correct it.”

Coleman also emphasized the importance of community partnerships between the city and nonprofits, the business community and other cities.

He said St. Paul is partnering with Minneapolis and other communities to market the Twin Cities to the world and lure “green” employers from environmentally savvy industries.

“For too long, our region has pitted city against city, east metro versus west metro,” Coleman said. “We have focused resources on luring a business from one city to another. Unfortunately, while we viewed our competition as Minneapolis or Eden Prairie, our real competition, Austin, Texas; Seattle; Silicon Valley; and Boston realized that they were in a battle with Singapore, Beijing or Sao Paulo. How we see our competition is about to change.”

Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172.