Charles and Linda Brink rolled up to Metropolitan Ministries' main holiday tent last November with a rental truck so full of food the tires buckled.

After the Brinks, along with their son Chris, helped unload the goods, Linda watched the parents and children who gathered at the tent. They came not only to receive donations but to rest and build their hope in difficult times.

TAMPA -- Questions about a contract for a teen mentoring program have spurred a top-level internal investigation and possible changes in how future agreements are approved and evaluated by Hillsborough County schools.

Jose Colindres of The Brink Foundation, a local family organization that works with low-income and minority communities to improve education, thinks the district can do more. He said other professionals, including doctors and lawyers, already provide such information online.

"What's more important than your teachers?'' said Colindres, who argues the results should be made public sooner.

Then there is the matter of all that money, all those educator observations (more than 40,000 last year) and the treasure trove of data now in the district's possession. Jose Colindres, who runs a foundation for poor and minority students, wanted to know when that data might be made public for parents.

The answer from Elia: The district needs to make sure it doesn't violate a law that protects teacher evaluations the first year.

"We're still analyzing it," she said.

Behind last week's release of the latest school grades was unflattering news for the Pinellas and Hillsborough districts: a drop in rank among other Florida school systems.

Hillsborough fell from No. 24 to No. 38 among the state's 67 districts this year while Pinellas is No. 49, down from No. 40. Among the 12 biggest districts Hillsborough is now ninth and Pinellas is 10th.

Hillsborough's district grade also dipped — from an A to a B — while Pinellas held on to a B for an eighth straight year despite coming as close as it ever has to a C.

TAMPA — They are the largest minority group in the Hillsborough schools.

They are descendants of Cuban settlers, children of South American construction workers and farm laborers in Ruskin and Plant City.

And, on average, their Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores need help.

An analysis by The St. Petersburg Times shows Hillsborough Hispanic students are scoring worse than their counterparts across the state. By one measure, that gap has been widening for a decade.

Jose Colindres, chief operating officer of a social service agency in Westchase, told the board Tuesday he supported that goal. But he was taken aback by the lack of detail in the agenda item, which didn't indicate just how much "above $50,000" the plan would actually cost.

Representatives from more than 20 organizations gathered at a community forum recently to talk about their funding concerns. The Brink Foundation, a family foundation that focuses on children and low-income families, hosted the event along with the Children's Board of Hillsborough County and Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church.