The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given $3 million to a nonprofit charter school start-up that plans to launch five high schools in the Bay Area, including one in either Alameda, Berkeley or West Contra Costa, by 2006.

The schools, which will be run by Envision Schools, a two-year-old San Francisco-based nonprofit, will target disadvantaged and minority students in low income urban areas.

"This investment will allow us to reach thousands of students who are not finding success in traditional, large urban high schools," said Envision Chief Executive Officer Daniel McLaughlin. "And we think that those communities have the most potential."

When opened, the schools will have no more than 400 students, each with a teacher-student ratio of 22 or 23 to one, McLaughlin said. "Really it's the students who will be doing most of the work and the teacher will be their guide," McLaughlin said.

Often cited as an example of urban school reform, charter schools exist outside the rules of the school district but are public. There are more than 285 charter schools in the state, including two in Alameda, according to statistics from the California Department of Education's Web site.

Envision will open its first charter school -- the Marin School of Arts and Technology -- on the College of Marin's Indian Valley campus in September.

A $375,000 grant from Napa New Technology via the Gates Foundation will help with start-up costs.

Students come from diverse backgrounds, included gifted programs and special education classes will attend. About 20 percent will transfer from private school, McLaughlin said.

City Arts and Tech High School, the first new school funded with the $3 million grant, will open in San Francisco in fall of 2004.

This summer, Envision will start looking at East Bay communities where high schools could open in 2005 and 2006, McLaughlin said.

At a time when just over 50 percent of African American and Hispanic students in the state aren't graduating from high school, according to studies, smaller schools and classes are important to student success, McLaughlin said.

"Our vision for an Envision high school is (it will be) personalized, engaging and very challenging ... we know that the students have to be deeply engaged to achieve," Mclaughlin said.

What's more, a study by the Harvard Graduate School of Education found that the lowest graduation rates in the country are concentrated in high schools with 900 or more students with a high percentage of non-white students, according to Envision Schools.

The new grant is part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's nationwide effort to boost graduation rates, particularly among African Americans and Hispanics. The foundation has committed $450 million to that project, according to foundation officials.