Gov. Nathan Deal earlier this month announced the Fulton County School System was one of nine winners of Innovation Fund grants, a $19.4 million competitive grant program created through Georgia’s Race to the Top plan.

The Fulton district and its partners will launch the Leadership and Innovation Academy, a program to equip principals and School Governance Councils with the skills they need to successfully operate and govern a charter school.

Through the Innovation Fund, the state awards grants to partnerships between local education authorities or charter schools, institutions of higher education, businesses and nonprofit organizations that develop or implement innovative and high-impact programs aimed at producing positive outcomes for students.

“The Innovation Fund empowers local communities to work together and think creatively about how to best address their educational needs,” Deal said. “The nine grant awards we make today represent a wide range of projects with the potential to serve as tomorrow’s best practices.”

Administered by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, the Innovation Fund provides competitive grants for proposals that creatively leverage members’ financial, human and intellectual resources to address priorities in the state’s school systems.

Georgia was awarded $400 million to implement its Race to the Top reform plan in August 2010. The state’s application was prepared with extensive input from education stakeholders and members of the business and philanthropic communities, who helped develop the idea to include the Innovation Fund in the state’s application. As interest in the Innovation Fund grows, the state will seek contributions from philanthropic organizations, nonprofits and businesses as a continuing source of start-up capital for promising innovations.