Northampton Education Foundation’s 23rd Annual Adult Spelling Bee on Oct. 22 at Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity was a great success! Thanks to our generous community, we raised approximately $14,000 for NEF’s Small Grants to Educators program, which supports innovative teaching and learning initiatives in Northampton’s public schools and Smith Vocational & Agricultural High School.
Congratulations to The Bee Bee Kings (Tom Kovar, Pete Nelson, and Dave Stern), sponsored by The Dadz and Osaka Lunch Club, who won the Bee by correctly spelling “ecdysiast”!
Please join us in thanking our sponsors:
NEF’s 2025–26 Event Sponsors: Ruby Level—Greenfield Savings Bank; Emerald Level—DA Sullivan & Sons, Friends of Marcia Burick, and Marisa Labozzetta & Martin Wohl; Amethyst Level—Fierst Bloomberg Ohm LLP.
Team Sponsors: 413 Sleep Better; A2Z Science & Learning Toy Store; Adam and Yesenia Greeff; Brian Leaf SAT Prep; Broadside Books; Campaign to Elect Laurie Loisel to Ward 3 City Council; Campaign to Elect Megan Wolf; Chia Collins and Michael Cohen; Committee to Re-Elect Quaverly Rothenberg; Committee to Re-Elect Michael Stein; Daily Hampshire Gazette; Dale Melcher and Bill Newman; Gage-Wiley & Co.; Greenfield and Northampton Cooperative Bank; Gwen Agna and Tom Marantz; Lesser, Newman, Aleo & Nasser; Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra Campaign Committee; Osaka Lunch Club; Red Barn Honey Company; ReVision Energy; Sallie Deans Lake and Kevin Lake; Talk the Talk on WHMP; Tandem Bagel Company; The Dadz; The Northampton Lions Club; Thornes Marketplace; UMass Five College Federal Credit Union; Valley Home Improvement, Inc.; Whalen Insurance; Wohl Family Dentistry; and Workroom Design Studio.
Thank you to Bombyx for hosting the Bee, to Herrell’s for their ice cream donation, to WHMP and Northampton Open Media for broadcasting the Bee; and to everyone who volunteered and competed.
Dale Melcher, president, Martin Wohl, vice president
Northampton Education Foundation