Stagg DECA team competes in district-wide event

Stagg High School Career Internship students and DECA club members travelled to Sandburg high school to participate in a mock DECA competition in the Sandburg Performing Arts Center. The competition was a district-wide event and students from Sandburg and Andrew joined the Stagg students in this 4th annual D230 competition.

The competition allowed the DECA students to showcase their academic knowledge in the fields of marketing, management, finance, and economics. It also highlighted their ability to demonstrate problem solving skills and their ability to analyze real-world business scenarios. The competition is broken up into three different segments – an economics test, a product knowledge test and a role play.

The role play portion of the competition proved to be particularly challenging for the participants. The students were given a real-world problem facing a local grocery store that was looking to make some policy changes to the way they managed their produce department. The store was looking to make changes on how they bought their products, how they tracked inventory and how they set pricing levels. Also, as part of their new procedures, students were also tasked with a plan to make regular donations of food to two local food banks.

The students were required to present their solutions to one of several judges. All of our judges were volunteers, some are retired teachers and others are area business leaders. Many of the judges have been actively involved with the district since the launch of the Successful Schools Successful Students Initiative a few years ago.

After the competition, awards were handed out to the top five finishers from each high school.

Congratulations to our winners from Stagg: Jorge Pineda, Alia Khan, Harsh Thakker, Dawid Tomecki, and 1st place finisher, Alicja Lichaj. This mini-conference was a dress rehearsal for a sectional competition to be held in January at Moraine Valley. Our students will compete against more than a dozen other area high schools for the chance to advance to a statewide competition held in Rosemont, IL in March. Winners there may advance to the International DECA competition to be held at Nashville, TN next April.