SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?

If it’s a student at the Lake Tahoe Environmental Science Magnet School who is able to rattle off information about food webs, millfoil and fish populations, you may be in trouble.

“I ask a lot of questions and they provide the answers,” said fifth grade teacher Bob Comlossy.

The school has received a Golden Bell Award in science from the California School Boards Association for its “Every day is Earth Day” curriculum. Comlossy will accept the award in San Francisco on Saturday.

The credit goes to the students, who have had science woven into their daily work since kindergarten, Comlossy said.

“When I talk about a food web, the kids know what a food web is,” he said. “This is why I can do these projects and not go crazy.”

This year, 92 percent of the fifth-graders at the magnet school tested as proficient or advanced on the California Standards Test. Many of this year’s fifth graders were kindergartners when the school, formerly Meyers Elementary School, first opened for the 2005-’06 school year.

‘”Everyday is Earth Day’ is basically the slogan of the school,” Comlossy said. “We are teaching science throughout the grades in English, math and science, and it’s being shown in the fifth-grade science scores. They go up every year.”

Science is articulated through the grades: Kindergartners receive instruction on certain science topics, in first grade that knowledge is mastered and more topics are introduced, and the momentum continues through fifth grade.

Since 2005, the school has received several honors for its efforts. In 2006, the fifth grade ￿won the statewide Jiminy Cricket Environmentality Challenge for bat habitat restoration as part of the U.S. Forest Service restoration of the Cook House Meadow near the school. The following year, the school was a finalist for the Disney Environmentality Challenge for its energy audit efforts, which saved the school $600 per month by turning off the lights two hours earlier per day.

Last year, when the state Disney award became the national Disney Planet Challenge, fifth graders decided to increase certain populations of fish integral to the basin’s food web.

“The thing is, the kids love it,” Comlossy said. “I’m not in any way an interesting teacher. The kids are spellbound. I had to kick them out to go to lunch.”

A group of fifth graders Thursday rushed to the back of the building to check out the aquarium full of about 60 speckled dace minnows. Students hope the tiny fish will spawn so the offspring can help feed the imperiled Lahontan cutthroat trout in Taylor Creek.

“You learn about taking care of the earth while you go to school,” said fifth-grader Annie Brejc, 10.