Crowd gathers Monday to raise money for Renton’s schools

Published 11:19 am Monday, April 30, 2012

The Friends of Renton Schools celebrated its third benefit breakfast Monday morning with the help of former NASA astronaut Bonnie Dunbar.

Dunbar was the keynote speaker for the fund-raising event and spoke to the crowded Renton Pavilion Event Center about her upbringing and the importance for young people to understand the paths open for them.

Organizers were still determining Monday how much money was raised at the breakfast. Last year the benefit breakfast raised more than $180,000.

Dunbar has completed five space missions and spent some 50 days in space in her career. Dunbar, a University of Washington graduate, is the director of Higher Education and STEM for the Boeing Co.

As a second-generation American with family origins in Scotland, Dunbar explained how she was drawn to the stars as a child.

They were the wonder of her imagination growing up on a rural farm in Outlook in Eastern Washington with no city lights to obscure her view.

Dunbar talked about her parents, teachers and pieces of history that shaped her pursuit of becoming an engineer with the intent to become an astronaut.The oldest of four children, Dunbar loved to read.

“I went all over the world in those books,” she said of geography and other reading she encountered as a child.

“We need to invest in our youth today,” she said.

Dunbar stressed the importance of math and science as a language that students today need to learn.

Youth today should be enabled to realize their dreams for the betterment of society, she said.

The Renton School District is coming off of a victory, successfully passed a $97 million school-improvement bond measure, which was validated on Friday. The measure received a 65.57 approval; in numbers that’s a 95-vote margin of approval.

About 300 people attended the fund-raising breakfast, filling more than 30 tables. Students acted as greeters and at the end handed out license-plate covers that read, Renton Schools, Ahead of the Curve.

The event was put on by the organization, Friends of Renton Schools, which started in 2009. The group was started by educators, business owners, civic leaders and community volunteers. The aim is to address the ongoing problems arising from state and federal education budget deficits and the impact they have on the quality of public education in the Renton School District.

Since 2006 the district has raised the graduation rate from 74 percent to 94 percent.