El Dorado County Academic Decathlon

It is nice to be reassured from time to time that our country’s future is in good hands. Recently, I was honored to share the stage with some of El Dorado County’s best and brightest students during the Awards Ceremony for the El Dorado County Academic Decathlon.

Teams of nine students from El Dorado, Oak Ridge, Ponderosa and Union Mine High Schools competed in 10 academic events. Many of these students displayed incredible talent in public speaking, navigating interviews and writing essays, in addition to comprehending an incredible amount of information relative to this year’s topic of Russia.

I applaud the participation of the El Dorado Union High School District and its support for the event. In addition to proctoring the Super Quiz, the four comprehensive high school principals — Matt Barnes, Stephen Wehr, Lisa Garrett, and Tony DeVille — personally congratulated students with hard-earned medals in subject areas of math, language and literature, economics, science, music, art, speech, interview, essay and Super Quiz. Superintendent Chris Hoffman joined in the festivities and participated in the Awards Ceremony.

The Academic Decathlon embodies a partnership of community volunteers and businesses in cooperation with the education community and the El Dorado County Office of Education. We are very fortunate in El Dorado County to receive support from Sheriff D’Agostini, Ray Nutting from the Board of Supervisors, Judge Warren Stracener, Richard Esposito from the Mountain Democrat, County Auditor Joe Harn, members of the El Dorado Union High School District Board and the El Dorado County Office of Education Board. We so appreciate and value the tremendous support of over 150 volunteers who also work to make the event possible. We would like to specifically acknowledge retired teachers, the AAUW, Kiwanis, and SAGE who annually contribute so many volunteers to this effort.

It would be impossible to name all of the individuals who make this event such a success; however, we would be remiss if we did not extend a special thank you to Tony DeVille, Jennifer Myers, Pete Miller, and the staff of Union Mine High School for their generous assistance with facilitating the Academic Decathlon Competition.

Congratulations to the Ponderosa High School Decathletes, winners of the El Dorado County Academic Decathlon, who will be competing in the State competition March 14-17, 2013, in Sacramento.

DR. VICKI BARBER
El Dorado County Superintendent of Schools