Good News About Polk County Public Schools

A team of students from Bartow International Baccalaureate won a first place award at the State History Fair and are among 66 Florida students qualified to compete at the National History Day program held at the University of Maryland-College Park from June 12 to 16, http://www.nhd.org/.

The State History Fair, www.floridahistoryfair.com  was held last month at Tallahassee Community College and the Bartow IB students’ first place history fair project was titled “The Scramble for Africa.” It won first place in the senior high group website category.  Their website can viewed at http://14065439.nhd.weebly.com/index.html. More than 950 students from 28 counties competed at the state event.  The first place finish qualified the Bartow IB students for the national event.

Bartow IB’s national qualifying team is composed of Dominic Chiampi, Gabrielle DiLullo, Harrison Pincket and Alix Rousseliere.  All of the students reside in Lakeland and are sophomores at Bartow IB.  Their history fair advisor is Bartow High teacher Theodore Wright.

Polk also had three entries selected for the finals at the state event. Although these entries did not qualify for the national event, selection for the finals meant they were among the top six entries in the state in their competition categories.

Selected for the finals from Polk were:

• Ian McKinney, a seventh grader from Lakeland at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy, was a finalist and eventual third-place state winner in the middle school historical paper category for his research titled “The Indian Removal Act of 1830: A Failure of the Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Five Civilized Tribes.”
• The Lawton Chiles Middle Academy team of Sal Campisi and Julia Schindler was a finalist in the middle school group website category for their project titled “Treaty of Payne’s Landing: A Diplomacy of Absolute Power.” Sal is an eighth grader from Lakeland and Julia is a seventh grader from Lakeland.
• The Lawton Chiles Middle Academy team of Prajakta Kulkarni, Neeshi Patel and Prit Patel was a finalist in the middle school exhibit category for their project titled “Debate of the Yellowstone Gray Wolf Reintroduction: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Prajakta, Neeshi and Prit are all seventh graders from Lakeland.

From left, Dominic Chiampi, Gabrielli DiLullo, Harrison Pincket, Alix Rousseliere.