Students to compete at spelling bee.(Neighborhood Trib)

Byline: Jan Jonas TRIBUNE REPORTER

Past winners of the 1995 and 1996 Regional Spelling Bee will be competing again this year.

They include 1995 regional winner Cathy Erbes, from the Eldorado cluster, and 1996 regional winner Daniel Koslover, who is home schooled and represents the Sandia cluster.

Erin Slater, representing San Juan County's Mesa Alta Junior High in Bloomfield, placed second last year. She is also competing again this year with 33 spellers from around the state.

The 50th Regional Spelling Bee sponsored by The Tribune will begin with registration at 8 a.m. March 29 at the Holiday Inn Pyramid, followed by a special celebration of 50 years of I-can-spell-better-than-you competition.

In the '80s there were more than 100 spellers involved and the competition took several hours to complete, so The Tribune changed the format. Now there is one speller from each high school cluster in Albuquerque and one or two from each outlying county depending on population.

Judges this year will be Albuquerque attorney David Hernandez, retired Sun West Bank Vice President Frances Keeler and school board member Mary Lee Martin.

The pronouncer is Bob Gassaway, assistant professor of …