Miss. announces 1st project to get funding from Toyota endowment

1st Toyota education project announced in Miss.

JACKSON, Miss. — Economic development officials on Wednesday announced the first project to use funds from a $50 million education endowment pledged by Toyota Motor Corp.

The project is a curriculum management audit of eight school districts in the area surrounding a Blue Springs site where Toyota plans to build a car plant. Toyota will make its first $5 million payment in May to the education fund being run by the Tupelo-based CREATE Foundation.

Work on the plant, meanwhile, is stalled because of the recession.

“Certainly, we hope this will be another reassurance to the people who have been very patient and understanding that we are coming and we are committed,” said Barbara McDaniel, external affairs manager for Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America.

McDaniel said the Mississippi education endowment is the largest ever given by the company.

“I think we wanted to make a strong statement that education is very important to Toyota, and we wanted the money to not just benefit the future for Toyota-related employment, but we wanted it to benefit the entire Mississippi region,” she said.

Toyota’s plans to build the Prius hybrid at the Blue Springs site northwest of Tupelo were shelved in December 2008 because of an industrywide downturn. The plant had been scheduled to begin production in late 2010 before the indefinite delay.

McDaniel said this week the status of the project hasn’t changed.

“We’ve never wavered on that. It’s always a question of when, not if,” McDaniel said.

David Rumbarger, president of the Community Development Foundation that helped recruit the automaker, said he’s not worried.

Rumbarger said Toyota has been meeting all of its financial obligations, including bond payments to the counties and the salaries of the plant’s existing employees.

Meanwhile, the state has finished an access road to the plant, and the PUL Alliance, representatives of Pontotoc, Lee and Union counties, is completing a rail spur from the main line of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway to the plant site.

He said the payoff will be worth the wait since the plant is expected to initially employ 2,000. He said suppliers also are expected to employ about 2,000 in the area.

Rumbarger said it’s hard to imagine the plant wouldn’t go forward with Toyota planning to spend $1 million on education and endow another $4 million each year for a decade.

“Why would they spend this money and not continue to go forward (with the plant)? It doesn’t seem rational,” Rumbarger said.

The endowment was established at the CREATE Foundation, the oldest community foundation in the state. Its purpose is to improve the education system in the three alliance counties.

The eight school district superintendents had asked for the $278,000 audit, which is recognized as a tool for curriculum design and delivery improvement.

“It’s going to let us see and understand our strengths and weaknesses,” said Union County Schools Superintendent Ken Basil. “We’re (labeled) a successful school district, but a lot of folks would take that to mean we can do better.”