(Rashah McChesney/Chilkat Valley News) Lila Tarleton talks about her experience at the state spelling bee on Monday, March 24, 2025, in Haines, Alaska.

Haines School sixth grader Lila Tarleton won the school’s spelling bee and after taking a regional test, placed high enough to join 75 other students heading to the state championship bee at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus. 

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Rashah McChesney is a multimedia journalist and editor who has reported and edited newsrooms from the Deep South to the Midwest to Alaska. For the past decade, she has worked in collaborative news as the...