La Porte ISD's Aryaman Jadhav will be among the area's top spellers competing in the HoustonPBS Spelling Bee on Saturday, March 31. The event will be televised live on Channel 8 at 2 p.m.

Aryaman, a student at Baker Sixth Grade Campus, will compete in the HoustonPBS event for the second year in a row. He was also the LPISD spelling champion last year as a fifth grader at Heritage Elementary School.

The spelling bee will be broadcast from the Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting on the University of Houston Main Campus. Aryaman will be speller #2 in the competition.

The top 55 spellers in the area, emerging as winners from spelling bees including over 100,000 competitors from elementary school through eighth grade, will compete for the chance to participate in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the nation's highest-profile academic event.

The winner of the 2012 HoustonPBS Spelling Bee will receive an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Washington, D.C. to represent Houston at the Scripps National Spelling Bee May 29-31.

The major sponsors for the 2012 HoustonPBS Spelling Bee are Fiesta, Holthouse Foundation for Kids, Capital One Bank, HCDE (Harris County Department of Education) and KUHF News 88.7, Houston Public Radio.

More information is available at www.houstonpbs.org/spellingbee.