N. Hollywood Moves to Finals in Science Bowl

North Hollywood High School’s veteran science team advanced to the finals Sunday in the national Science Bowl after a double tiebreaker, but the school’s rookie economics team was knocked out of the Fed Challenge.

The San Fernando Valley high school made a strong showing in Washington, D.C., on Sunday with its pair of academic teams.

Other California teams advancing to today’s finals are Fullerton’s Troy High School, which lost to the North Hollywood team Sunday; Mira Loma High School in Sacramento and Albany High School in Albany.

Both North Hollywood teams are composed of five students from the school’s magnet program for highly gifted students.

The science team, which finished second last year, was one of four teams to remain undefeated during Sunday’s elimination rounds in which 53 squads from around the nation competed.

A nail-biting double tiebreaker against New Mexico’s Albuquerque Academy ended with the question: Cestoda and trematoda are part of what phylum?

“Platyhelminthes--flatworms,” said North Hollywood team captain Iris Ahronowitz, 17. “I knew the answer because I used to be obsessed with tapeworms when I was in seventh grade. That was really exciting.”

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The key to her team’s success, Ahronowitz said by telephone after the competition, is keeping cool under pressure.

“To know something is one thing, “ she said, “but to know something and compete through an entire day and still keep your focus is something else.”

The winner of the Science Bowl, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, will be flown to Sydney, Australia, for a two-week course at the International Science School.

North Hollywood was the first California school to compete in the the Fed Challenge, a contest sponsored by Citibank Corp. and the Federal Reserve Bank. It was also held in Washington on Sunday.

Nine teams were asked to discuss current economic indicators--such as gross national product and inflation rate--forecast economic trends and make a recommendation about short-term interest rates.

They were judged by three top Federal Reserve officials, and the winners will be awarded a grant of $100,000. The semi-finalist teams have already won grants of $35,000.

Armed with a Power Point computer program, nameplates and data culled from business journals, the North Hollywood team argued for fiscal prudence in the face of economic flux.

“Our recommendation was that we should leave interest rates steady,” said Jonathan Stout, 17.

The team argued that international markets have managed to create enough demand for American goods to stave off inflation--even as the nation’s economy grows at a rapid pace.

The team immediately dismissed the idea of lowering the Fed rate because it could overheat the economy, said Patrick Yeghnazar, 18.

It initially considered an interest rate hike as a precaution against inflation, but could not find statistics to support that policy, said Jonah Lehrer, 17.

“We wanted to wait for signs of inflation--it has been nonexistent for the past few quarters,” he said. “We felt we shouldn’t act on a guess or a premonition; we should act on the basis of statistics.”

Stout said he was happy with his team’s performance.

“I’m sure it was very close,” he said. “We weren’t the ‘winners, winners’--we’re just the winners we were before.”

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Carla Schiller, a North Hollywood High economics teacher and Fed Challenge coach, said her team embodied the enduring promise of public education.

“I feel that, especially in L.A., people send their kids to private schools whenever they can,” she said.

“But I’m really proud of the kids of North Hollywood, and I think it’s a nice comment on public education.”