Granada Hills Charter High School won its third consecutive U.S. Academic Decathlon competition Saturday, earning the Los Angeles Unified School District its 14th national title.
After winning the statewide Academic Decathlon in March, the San Fernando Valley school went on to compete against 52 schools from the United States and London at the national competition in Minneapolis.
Another LAUSD campus, El Camino Real Charter High School won second place in the national contest, bringing the school to a total of nine titles and six national championships.
“In having the top two teams in the country, LAUSD this year exceeded our own amazingly high standards in the academic decathlon,” Superintendent John Deasy said in a news release.
The nine-member winning Granada Hills team includes Jae Kyung Chong, Seung Woo Baek, Hamidah Mahmud, Kelley Ma, Kimberly Ly, Kailin Li, Dayoung Kim, Faria Ghori, and Beatrice Dimaunahan.
The Granada Hills school -- which has three national and three state titles -- beat some 450 students from other high school academic decathlon teams across the United States.
“This is my 13th nationals and by far the most exciting,” Cliff Ker, coordinator for the LAUSD Academic Decathlon, said in the release. ” It was a close race between Granada and El Camino.”
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Students battled in 10 areas including art, economics, essay, interview, language and literature, mathematics, music, science, social science and speech. This year's theme was Russia.
Franklin High School, another LAUSD campus, also participated in the Academic Decathlon online competition. The school won the “Super Quiz” portion of last month’s statewide competition.
Top-scoring students were honored with individual medals and trophies at Saturday's awards ceremony.
