WHY REGENT LEGACY ACADEMY?

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With the controversial closure of La Reina, students and parents asked the school’s speech and debate coaches to open an after school academy to continue offering the activity as their daughters were forced to scatter to different schools, most of which don't have speech and debate programs.  Regent Legacy Academy is a continuation of that labor of love, particularly as the La Reina Alumnae Association and former trustees and administrators work to reestablish a school in the Conejo Valley, while many displaced La Reina families - and families that never had the chance to attend La Reina - have been frustrated in trying to find schools that meet the needs of their children.

Speech and debate has been one of the biggest casualties of Prop 13, the 1970s property tax revolt that over time dramatically slashed public school funding in California. As money dried up in the 1980s, school administrators across the state cut academic teams like speech and debate and now many believe that they’re simply doing their jobs if students are passing standardized tests and the football team is winning games. Today, there simply is no large, school-based K-12 speech and debate program anywhere in Ventura County anymore, and Regent Legacy Academy is working to fill that void, both for displaced La Reina students and for students whose schools may not have offered the activity in decades, if ever.

Regent Legacy Academy supports students in whatever events they want to compete in, rather than limiting ourselves to one format of debate, or forcing students to compete in only one speech event throughout their careers.  One recent student, for example, competed in policy debate as a middle schooler and then qualified to the high school state tournament the next year in Original Prose & Poetry.  We encourage students to both learn the analytical skills of debate, but also to learn the presentation skills and soft skills of speech competition.  RLA students go back and forth between events and receive supportive coaching no matter what their interests are.

Matt Conrad is the founder of Regent Legacy Academy and was the last head coach at La Reina High School and Middle School. During his tenure, the program produced state champions in Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Original Oratory, and Original Prose & Poetry, with the program sending its largest entry to the Berkeley tournament in spring 2024 since Liz Harlacher ran the program. Matt has been selected to judge 3 different national championship final rounds (policy debate, Extemporaneous Speaking, and Informative Speaking) and served as an elected leader of both the Tri-County Forensic League (high school) and the Southern California Junior Forensics League (middle school) while judging over a dozen state championship final rounds. The online La Reina Invitational also grew into one of the largest online tournaments of the year on the West Coast - larger than several prominent university invitationals - and has continued its size and influence since the school closure, due in no small part to the residual goodwill towards the La Reina school community.

In its last year of operation, La Reina’s speech and debate program had a half dozen different students win a first place award at a competition, and for several years in a row, at least one 8th grader has won a high school varsity competition. The program was also named as a “Leading Chapter” by the National Speech and Debate Association.

It’s said in education that kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. For us, that means encouraging every student to be the best that they can be – building relationships with every student and their parents, listening when kids are feeling down, and celebrating the little milestones along the way that mark each student’s journey in the activity, with some cookies, soda, and pizza to help. Some kids will want to win nationals while other kids are just looking to learn some skills, go to a few tournaments, and have the activity on their resume when they apply to college. 

RLA coaches are committed not just to helping students pursue excellence in speech and debate competition but to help them grow to be winners in life. Like any other teenage competition, the world of speech and debate has its share of students who were successful in that world... and not much else. The goal for RLA students is to help them win in life. That means not just achieving excellence in the classroom or in competitions, but helping them figure out their own inner passions, develop their own goals, and take ownership of the next chapter of their lives while avoiding the pitfalls of drinking, drugs, bad study habits, endless technology use, etc. Students graduate competent and confident to go out and pursue success at the highest levels of their academic and professional lives.