TAMPA -- Experienced teachers, start your engines.

On Tuesday, the Hillsborough County School Board is expected to approve job descriptions for mentor evaluators and peer evaluators, the foot soldiers in the district's $202 million reform effort with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Also on the board's agenda for Tuesday are appointments to four new, director-level positions -- for evaluation and compensation; assessment and performance; communication and project management; and new teacher induction -- to help manage the district's seven-year Gates effort under project director David Steele.

By this fall, up to 200 teachers will be tapped to help support and evaluate their colleagues. The mentors will carry a smaller load of beginning teachers, while peer evaluators take charge of rating veterans.

Every teacher in the district will be rated on a scale of 1 to 5. Mentors and peer evaluators will be responsible for 30 percent of that score, principals will be in charge of another 30 percent, and student performance on tests over three years will comprise the remaining 40 percent. Eventually, those ratings will help determine which teachers are awarded tenure, awarded merit pay, or dismissed for low performance.

Do you have at least five years' experience and, preferably, a master's degree? Have you shown leadership ability and a "demonstrated ability to raise student achievement over multiple years"? Apply within. Interviews will begin right after FCAT testing ends in late March.

-- Tom Marshall, Times Staff Writer