First to Fifth Graders Sought For Palisades Spelling Bee II

The second annual Pacific Palisades Spelling Bee will be held on Sunday, February 24 at the Rustic Canyon Recreation Center gym.   The competition will include first and second graders (10 a.m. to noon) and third, fourth and fifth graders from 1 to 4 p.m.   More than 110 kids from 15 public and private schools participated in last year’s inaugural event, conceived and organized (with the help of numerous hard-working volunteers) by Palisades Elementary parent Leslie Pereira and her husband Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA and a member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel.   ’We already have 71 kids signed up from 13 schools,’ Pereira said Monday, ‘so we expect to have another fun event.’ The school’s represented thus far are Palisades, Marquez, Canyon, Calvary, Corpus Christi, Village, Seven Arrows, St. Matthew’s, Le Lycee, Mirman, Calthorp, Village Glen West and Center for Early Education.   ’We appreciate the grant we received last spring from the Woman’s Club,’ Pereira said. ‘It helped defray most of our expenses and encouraged us to have a contest in 2013.’   Brittny Aspey, a former Palisades Elementary teacher who now runs Oceans Education, a tutoring and enrichment business, compiled and controlled the confidential spelling word lists last year and will so again in February.   In last year’s contest, each contestant wrote down 30 spelling words given by the announcer. The top 10 spellers from each grade (fourth and fifth were combined) moved on to the oral presentation, where they each had to spell five words aloud while standing on a platform in the gym.   This year’s judges include Michelle Bitting, poet laureate of Pacific Palisades; Richard Rosser, award-winning author/ playright/screenwriter; Joan Ingle, principal of Palisades Elementary; Emily Williams, principal of Marquez Elementary; Superior Court Judge Elaine Mandel Peters; and Bill Bruns, editor of the Palisadian-Post.’They all live in Pacific Palisades.’   For more information and to register, please go to palibee.com. The registration fee is $15. The Pali Bee is a nonprofit organization.   ’Space is limited,’ said Pereira. ‘I expect that demand may exceed capacity so we will be taking roughly the first 30 sign-ups in each grade category.”