To: tejek who wrote (709142 ) 4/14/2013 4:18:30 PM From: joseffy Respond to of 1577024 The Annenberg Foundation gave a $50 million grant to match local private funds to improve schools, and Ayers fought to bring the grant to Chicago, according to participants and project records. The project's organizing committee asked Obama to serve as the board chairman in 1995. . For seven years, Ayers and Obama worked on funding for education projects, including some projects advocated by Ayers . "The specific job of the board of directors was to give out the money.," said Stanley Kurtz, a conservative researcher for the Ethics and Public Policy Center and frequent Obama critic. "Instead of giving money directly to schools, they gave money to what they call external partners and these partners were often pretty radical community organizer groups," said Kurtz, who also has been reviewing the Annenberg Challenge's recently released records. The board, for example, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill Ayers' small schools project. The project promoted alternative education, including projects like the Peace School -- where the curriculum centered on a United Nations theme -- and another school where the focus was African-American studies. The funding, according to Kurtz and records CNN reviewed, came directly from the Annenberg foundation which Obama chaired . The project shut down in 2003 after achieving "little impact on school improvement and student outcomes," its final report stated. While working on the Annenberg project, Obama and Ayers also served together on a second charitable foundation, the Woods Fund. It was that foundation that Obama referenced in the debate -- not the Annenberg Challenge. Among Wood Foundation recipients were the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church, where Obama attended and was married; and the Children and Family Justice Center, where Ayers' wife Dohrn was director."