Three Cheers for Taft High’s Champs : Nationwide laurels in the academic decathlon are welcome good news for the LAUSD

So often it seems that the Los Angeles Unified School District, to borrow an ungrammatical line from comedian Rodney Dangerfield, “don’t get no respect.”

In just the last month, LAUSD officials suffered through the annual effort to break up the district, weathered secessionist attempts by clusters of schools and got an earful from folks steamed about a mock earthquake drill so soon after the real thing. LAUSD officials also faced a report from parents who found them disdainful and unresponsive. As if that wasn’t enough, they also got slapped with a lawsuit from Donald Trump.

The district needed some good news, some proof that it could indeed help produce some of the nation’s best students. It came this past weekend: Taft High earned a rousing victory in the Super Bowl of secondary-school academics, the 13th U.S. Academic Decathlon.

Having already defeated 42 public and private schools from around California, the Woodland Hills school team took on the best from 41 states and the District of Columbia in 10 events, including math, fine arts, economics, science and literature. The competition’s finale was a game-show-style Super Quiz that tested students’ knowledge of 19 important documents such as the Camp David accords and the declaration of the students who revolted in China’s Tian An Men Square.

Taft’s students finished first for the second time in five years. They won more than half of the $30,000 in scholarships awarded to individual students. The school’s nine-member team also had the competition’s top student, Daniel Berdichevsky, 17, and claimed five of nine awards for individual high scorers. Also on team with Berdichevsky were Chris Huie, 17; Kimberly Shapiro, 16; Michael Michrowski, 17; Andrew Salter, 17; Sheldon Peregrino, 18; Sage Vaughn, 17; Rebecca Rissman, 17, and Stephen Shaw, 16.

“Now, they can go back to being normal, impossible teen-agers,” said mother Emily Vaughn. And teen-agers who get respect.