This manuscript evaluates the geographical distribution of the projects supported by the program Improvement of Teaching in Public Schools in the State of Rio de Janeiro (hereinafter ITPS) from 2007 to 2014. This program intended to bring institutions of higher education and/or research (IHER) closer to public schools, addressing relevant issues on education and science, improvements in infrastructure and continuing education to teachers. It reserved 30% of the budget to carry out projects outside the metropolitan region, aiming to bring scientific discourse closer to the population far from bigger cities. Based on document analysis available at Faperj website, the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Supporting Research in Rio de Janeiro, our results show that the program covered state regions unevenly, directly marked by the number of institutions proposals in each municipality. In other words, the incidence of IHERs in a certain locality indicated a greater number of projects implemented, so schools farther from IHERs ended up less contemplated. We suggest that this geographic distribution is related to the program policies, which left to individual IHERs all implementation power about how and where to act.