At the third annual East Baton Rouge Parish School System Spelling Bee, for the second year in a row a student from Buchanan Elementary School walked away the winner of the second night of competition. The new student winner for the district’s fourth and fifth graders from Buchanan Elementary is Mason Guillot. Last year, Jay Lee won the title representing the school. The first night’s winner among second and third graders was Dedunu Herath of Baton Rouge Center for the Visual and Performing Arts.
There were more than 100 entrants representing the second, third, fourth and fifth grades of elementary schools in the district. The competition pitted second and third graders against each other November 11 and then fourth and fifth graders on November 12 at McKinley Middle Magnet School. On the first night, the winning word was “jaunt.” The winning word for the second night was “atrophy.”
A fifth grader at Buchanan Elementary School who has been in the Gifted Program since Pre-K, Guillot currently is taking Geometry at McKinley High School. His favorite subject is math, and he plans on becoming a chemical engineer. One day he would like to participate in the national spelling bee. In the third grade, he won his level in the district spelling bee (2007). Guillot is the son of Annette and Mackie Guillot.
Herath is a third grader at the Performing Arts school. She is a member of the Talented Art program and is one of the school’s top students. Her parents are Ananda and Suba Herath.
Winners for the second and third grades (first photo, left to right) were:
First Place – Herath
Second Place – Jordyn Rushing of Shenandoah Elementary School
Third Place – Anusha Zaman of Buchanan Elementary School
Winners for the fourth and fifth grades (second photo, left to right) were:
First Place – Guillot
Second Place – Princton Pines of The Dufrocq School
Third Place – Jermaine Sampson of Glen Oaks Park Elementary School
The System’s elementary assistant superintendents, Paula Fabre and Paula Johnson, organized the event.
