We The People is one of Tahoma’s prestigious competition classes. The program has been running in Tahoma for over 30 years and has become a well-known team nationwide.

To quickly recap what We the People it is a competition-based class at Tahoma in which students discuss and debate the American government and the Constitution. Tahoma’s We the People team this year has already won their state competition and will be one of the first teams to lead Tahoma’s various extracurriculars to statewide competitions.

Now We The People is bound for nationals, but there is a problem, with the rise of Covid the road to the state has become a rocky one, there are many teams at Tahoma that are going to a national or state competition, We The People is going to be one of the first teams that will be traveling out of state for competition. Unfortunately, certain Covid protocols must be followed in order for the team to travel.

First, the school board and the state of Washington must both approve an out-of-state school trip, additionally vaccination status will make it difficult for the team to travel. Luckily though, as of right now, the school board has announced their support for the We The People team going out of state to nationals.

Second, the problem is cost. Normally the cost per family for nationals is roughly $2,000 and while this cost is high, it is nothing unexpected. But, new Covid safety protocols seemed to have hopped this price up quite a bit. In the past, four kids would take up one hotel room, but now, you can only fit two kids into a room. What was roughly $2,000 has become roughly $4,000 per family, and while some grants can be rewarded to help families, the cost is still going to be difficult for everyone to reach.

Many challenges stand in the way of the We The People team on their road to nationals, and sadly We The People is just the first in a long line of Tahoma teams traveling out of state that now will see rising costs and restrictions.

We have to keep hope though. The We The People team is currently trying to find workarounds to cut costs and keep people safe, while also allowing the team to travel to Washington DC and have their shot at winning nationals.