Area students vie for top spelling honors in regional bee
Goshen. Chester Academy Middle School student ties for second place in the annual competition.
| 22 Mar 2023 | 03:11
Markus Ferrara, an eighth-grade student who attends Port Jervis Middle School won the annual regional spelling bee at Orange-Ulster BOCES on March 16, 2023. (
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(L-R) Izgi Bogubaev from Monroe-Woodbury Middle School, Keturah Jordan from Washingtonville Middle School and Joseph Veltri of Chester Academy tied for second place in this year’s regional spelling bee. (
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By correctly spelling “ivermectin,” Markus Ferrara, an eighth-grade student at Port Jervis Middle School, won the annual Regional Spelling Bee at Orange-Ulster BOCES.
Ferrara will compete on the national level at the Scripps National Spelling Bee to be held in the Washington, D.C. area from May 28 through June 3, 2023. He will also receive subscriptions to Britannica Online and Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary as well as the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award.
The regional event is organized each year by the Division of Instructional Support Services and was sponsored by Orange-Ulster BOCES, in collaboration with the Orange County School Boards Association and the Community Foundation of Orange and Sullivan.
For remaining in the competition through the final round, three students - Izgi Bogubaev from Monroe-Woodbury Middle School, Keturah Jordan from Washingtonville Middle School and Joseph Veltri of Chester Academy were granted joint second place.
The seventh and eighth-grade students from Chester Academy Middle School, Cornwall Central Middle School, C. J. Hooker Middle School, (Goshen CSD), Highland Falls Intermediate School, Minisink Valley Middle School, Monroe-Woodbury Middle School, Port Jervis Middle School, Valley Central Middle School and Washingtonville Middle School competed in this year’s event.
Each bee participant received a certificate and all winners will have their names engraved on commemorative plaques and Barnes and Noble gift cards.
The bee’s pronouncer and coordinator was Melanie Lofaro, Assistant Director of Instructional Support Services at Orange-Ulster BOCES (OUB) The assistant coordinator of the bee was Jacob Anderson, Teaching Assistant at OUB. Bee judges included Sheri McNair, Librarian, James I. O’Neill High School (Highland Falls); Christopher Rugnetta, Teaching Assistant at OUB; and Kathleen Helhoski, Instructional Support Specialist at OUB.
For more information about the spelling bee, please contact Melanie Lofaro at 845-781-4363.