MARC JACOBS
Hutch Post
The Hutchinson Reno County Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a civics bee for students in grades 6 through 8. The finals for the bee are on Wednesday April 23 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Stringer Fine Arts Center on the HutchCC campus.
The preliminaries for the bee actually began earlier this school year as the application process began on October 15, 2024, and closed on February 4, 2025.
The chamber’s Lauren Storm says that students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades across the country are invited to enter the competition by writing an essay that answers three different prompts. They are:
• Identifying a specific problem, challenge or opportunity in your community.
• What individuals or organizations would you work with to accomplish your solution.
• How does your solution include founding principles and civic virtues
The essays should be around 750 words.
From these essays, 20 finalists are chosen by local judges that use an online platform to judge these essays on certain criteria, on content, but not necessarily composition.
Then at the live Civics Bee the 20 finalists will answer questions from two rounds of multiple-choice questions on civics.
From there, six students will be selected to answer questions from judges on their essays. Following the questioning, three students will be selected as the finalists. The third-place finalist receives $150, the second-place finalist $250 and the first-place winner gets $500. As an added benefit this year IdeaTek is providing the final three competitors with a tablet.
All three of the finalists have the opportunity to move onto the state competition which is held in May.