Perry Hill Students Compete For Spelling TItle

The final word in Wednesday night’s first Annual Perry Hill School Spelling Bee, fittingly enough, was compose.”

Sixth-grader Kamil Alkaul did just that, beating out 24 of his peers to take first place. 

The competition dwindled to the final two, and Alkaul and Megan Bisson battled for nearly 10 minutes before Bisson misspelled a word, duplicate,” which Alkaul spelled correctly, followed by compose” for the win.

It was scary,” Alkaul said. There were moments when she was really close to getting the word (‘duplicate’) correct.”

Alkaul took home a $100 cash prize, which he says he’ll spend all on something I like.”

His mother, Ingrid Vit, said she was also nervous as her son took the stage and that she’ll let him splurge on a video game or put the money toward his savings for an iPad mini.

I helped him study. We were going over the first list and I figured he would do fine and I didn’t know if he would go further and he did. I’m so proud and he deserves it,” Vit said.

Each fifth- and sixth-grade classroom held a spelling bee on March 13, PHS Principal Lorraine Williams said.

Further competition whittled down the field to the top 25 spellers, who moved on to Wednesday night’s final competition, which brought back a formal bee to Shelton after a six-year absence.

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Wednesday’s bee was sponsored by the Shelton Education Endowment Fund (SEEF), a component of the Valley Community Foundation. 

The idea was first brought to Perry Hill by committee members and plans developed quickly to make it a school-wide event,” Williams said. The staff embraced the idea and did an excellent job in bringing it forward to their classes.”

We are so grateful to be part of this wonderful return of the spelling bee,” Valerie Knight-DiGangi of SEEFs Advisory Committee said. It is an awesome, awesome thing and we are so very fortunate.”

Williams said she was very proud of the real community event” and that the Board of Education aims to expand the bee next year to all elementary schools and possibly the intermediate school.

All 25 finalists received school store coupons.

Monetary prizes were awarded to: 

  • 1st place: Kamil Alkaul, $100
  • 2nd place: Megan Bisson, $75
  • 3rd place: Skyler Kim, $50
  • 4th place: Matthew Cho, $25
  • 5th place: Nicholas Turco, $25

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