The Bellevue Schools Foundation raised a record-breaking $700,000 towards their goal to double investments in students in the next five years during their annual Spring for Schools event on May 6.
The foundation funds several initiatives in the Bellevue School District, including the K-12 Computer Science Initiative. The initiative is a first-in-the-nation program that infuses coding and technology into different subjects.
“Because of you, first-graders are learning to collaborate and think critically-and to discover new confidence in themselves,” Bellevue Schools Foundation Board President Connie Peterson said.
Newport Heights Elementary School teacher Dani Ward spoke about the program and its impact during the luncheon. The initiative pushes her first grade students to complex, imaginative thinking, she said, but her class is absolutely capable. There’s no reason that every student shouldn’t have access to these 21st century skills, she added.
“If it doesn’t start in the early grades, then by the time they get to middle school or high school, they’ve already decided, ‘That’s not for me. That’s not my demographic, the kids who are in that class don’t look like me,'” Ward said. Her classroom’s story “can be the story of every classroom, for every student in the Bellevue School District.”
Former Bellevue School District student and 2009 Spring for Schools speaker Osbaldo Hernandez took to the stage to share how the foundation and district programs helped him grow. When Hernandez emigrated to the United State at age 12, he was only able to count to the number seven in English. He is now a teacher at the Shoreline School District.
Hernandez was joined by Highland Middle School eighth grader Michelle Dunayvitser, who also struggled to learn English when starting school in Bellevue and has also received help from the district’s SOAR Positive Behavior Intervention Program, bringing her 2.0 GPA to between a 3.5 and 4.0 GPA.