Rhythmic sounds of washboards and spoons filled the Issaquah Community Center, putting smiles on the hundreds of faces in the audience.

Newcastle Elementary School teacher Robin Wood and a group of her students shared the music they learned in a bluegrass and folk art program funded by the Issaquah Schools Foundation at the organization’s annual fund-raising luncheon last week.

“Our region began as mining towns,” Wood said. “Their story is our story.”

Bluegrass and folk art became a common thread throughout the curriculum at Newcastle, she said.

“We watched our hallways come alive.”

The students, J.T. Anderson, Madi Herr, Mark Philpot, Dylan Sherman and Jenny Wood, shared their impressions as well, saying the music made them “go home singing,” and that the culminating folklife festival was one of the best things they had the chance to do at the school.

The luncheon raised an estimated $324,000, and gave those in the audience a glimpse of a number of programs supported and funded by the foundation.

“We were grateful for people’s extraordinary generosity, knowing that people really stretched to give,” Executive Director Robin Callahan said. She noted that one of the foundation’s goals is to get out word about its goals and accomplishments to residents who don’t already know about it and support it.

“We look at the luncheon as a ‘friend-raiser’ as much as a fundraiser, so we asked all of our table captains to invite at least two new people to their tables. We ended up with a lot of new people,” Callahan said.

Before the event began, the Issaquah High School Robotics Team navigated their remote control robot affectionately called “the rabbit” through the crowd, and answered questions about their trips to competitions in Tacoma, Portland and Georgia last year.

Also from IHS, seniors Kyle Corbitt and Nicole Beck displayed some lab equipment that an ISF grant purchased for teacher Thomas Haff’s physics classes. The device, helps the students measure the relationship between a force and the rotational acceleration of a disc, Corbitt explained.

“We’re able to take what we learn in lecture and apply it in labs,” Beck added. “Sometimes we get results we don’t expect.”

The students also record measurements on a computer, which helps make predictions.

“We predict what the acceleration should be, but that’s not always what we get,” Corbitt said.

Several tables were filled with “Southend Moms,” including a large number from Maple Hills Elementary School.

“From what I understand, we don’t get a lot of funding from the state,” said Shannon Leonard, a “Southend Moms” table captain. “This is extremely important for us to gather money from the community.”

Emcee Pat Cashman emphasized that point as well.

“ISF’s programs and grants touch every one of the district’s 16,000 students,” Cashman said.

Eve Martin, president of the ISF board of directors and a retired teacher, said that everyone involved in ISF and those who regularly support it have a common zeal for creating an ever-better school system.

“What we share is a passion for students and their education — not just any education, but the best education,” Martin said.

For more information about the Issaquah Schools Foundation, to watch a video produced for the luncheon or to make a donation, visit www.issaquahschoolsfoundation.org.