Three students to travel to Orlando conference
The Jacksonville High School DECA Club has outperformed expectations and will send three students to Orlando for the DECA International Career Development Conference (ICDC), and international competition.
The Distributive Economics Club of America (DECA) is the foremost representative of high school business where students compete in a range of events against other schools located in their areas.
The premise of the competition is that each individual competes their cluster exam with 100 questions alongside a situational role play in an area of business including marketing, business management and administration, finance, hospitality and tourism, or personal financial literacy.
In order to qualify for this competition, JHS DECA Club traveled on January 24 to Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Illinois. Those competing with written events in the categories of entrepreneurship, business and operation research, project management, and integrated marketing campaigns, go through an arduous process that requires months of preparation, all nighters and a lot of research. These events are due prior to the regional, but are first competed at state, so they supply a “free ticket” to the competition.
JHS DECA is proud to announce that due to overall and individual efforts in the South Suburb Sectional, all of its 20 competing members qualified for state.
Moving forward, the team’s preparation led them to a train ride on March 6 to attend the Illinois DECA Career Development Conference.
On arrival, the team checked into the Hyatt Regency O’Hare Hotel in Chicago, where they were welcomed into the hotel alongside over 2,000 other students. The first day of competition consisted of the cluster exams and the 80th annual opening ceremony late into the night.
On the first full day, JHS DECA students divided, tackling the role play and written events, finally meeting back up later that night for the banquet in the grand ballroom, with a special emphasis on the State Action Team.
The results were a success. Sixteen of 20 students showed high proficiency (won awards) in one or more of the categories. Categories included a 100 questions cluster examination that has typical questions providing more than one correct answer, but only one will be 100% correct. Without such hard questions, all students would score at or near 100%.
A proficient score is 70% or higher. Students also took on two role plays, for which they are given 10 minutes to study any given scenario. Next, they met with a judge who role plays with them and asks two questions for which the students are not prepared. They are scored based on performance versus a rubric (which they do not see); again, 70% or higher is proficient. The students were then asked to do it again with the second scenario being different than the first.
The next competitive section — and where JHS showed the greatest success — was in written events. The competitor took on a topic that could come from a wide range of categories, anything from automotive technology or accounting to new business ideas that could become a chain, for example.
Teams of JHS students submitted five written event entries, and three teams placed in the top 10 and made it up on stage for medals. The Little Stove presentation by Annemarie Fraas, Luke Driver and Ella Rajaguru placed 4th in the Business Solutions Division (Fraas and Rajaguru made it to the stage in the same division last year for a written presentation regarding Home Girls Boutique, now 37 South Boutique & Makery). Rudy McCulloch and Ella Bruere placed 4th in the business startup category for their presentation on advanced grain bin technology (a way to improve yield accuracy and farmer safety).
The highlight of the weekend was Cole Nebel, Emma Guidish and Jamila Lanorio winning 3rd place and a trip to the international competition in Orlando in late April for their independent business plan presentation called SchoolShare.
This little group of 20 kids made a lot of business noise recently and the community of Jacksonville deserves to read about their accomplishments.
