Sam Muniz County Spelling Bee Champion-Moving onto State

On Friday February 18^th sixth grade Mountain Vista student Sam Muniz won the Pinal County Spelling Bee championship!  Sam is part of Mountain Vista’s innovative accelerated 5/6 combination class.  Students in this class are academically pushed far beyond the standard curriculum.  Sam’s teacher Lori Tate feels that this advanced curriculum helped Sam win the spelling championship in spite of much of Sam’s competition being from the seventh and eighth grades.  Sam will move on to the State Spelling Championship which takes place Saturday March 26^th at Arizona State University.  Sam could not have done it without his Spelling Bee coach fifth grade teacher Monika Bond.