Rainier Beach High School will receive a $50,000 technology package after a Lakeside School graduate redirected her Doodle for Google prize to the south Seattle campus.
Kameirah Johnson, 18, won the 2025-26 Doodle for Google competition with an illustration titled "Hair Power: The Crown That Grows From Us."
The national title came with a $55,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 technology package designated for her school. Johnson chose to send the tech package to Rainier Beach instead of Lakeside, the private Seattle school she attended.
"I should give this to a school full of kids who look like me — a school full of Black kids," Johnson told the South Seattle Emerald, describing the moment she decided to redirect the prize. "And immediately, I thought of Rainier Beach."
Johnson said she searched online and confirmed that Rainier Beach had the highest percentage of Black students among Seattle Public Schools high schools. National Center for Education Statistics data for the 2024-25 school year shows about 41% of Rainier Beach students identified as Black.
The resource gap between the two schools is wide. Lakeside School charges $52,000 in tuition for the 2026-27 school year and held a $260 million endowment as of 2024. Rainier Beach is a public school that was nearly shuttered in 2011, when just 366 students attended a building built for nearly four times that number.
Since then, enrollment has rebounded. More than 900 students enrolled at Rainier Beach for the 2025-26 school year.
The school posted an 83.8% four-year graduation rate in 2024-25, according to Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction data.
On Friday, Aug. 28, the school held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new performing arts center.
Johnson told the Emerald she announced the donation publicly and quickly so the decision would stick. After the news spread, a Rainier Beach student contacted her on social media to say Johnson's artwork had inspired them to start creating again.
Johnson graduated from Lakeside in spring 2026 and is heading to New York University (NYU) to study studio art and economics. Her winning doodle responded to the contest theme "My superpower is…" with an artist statement celebrating Black hair as "culture, care, and survival passed down without words," according to the official Doodle for Google page.
Judges included NBA All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo and National Teacher of the Year Ashlie Crosson.
The Emerald reported that Rainier Beach High School representatives had not responded to a request for comment by press time. The specific contents of the $50,000 technology package and how it will be deployed have not been disclosed.
Seattle Schools Week Ahead
- Wednesday, Sept. 2: Seattle Education Association and Seattle Public Schools resume contract negotiations with a federal mediator, as we reported Aug. 31. A strike deadline looms.
- School board meeting agendas and minutes are posted at seattleschools.org.
