DECA is a marvelous program that your son/daughter will be heavily involved in this year. DECA is a co-curricular student organization for high school marketing students that brings learning to life. It helps students apply learning in the context of business, connect to the business community, and promotes competition. In Ohio there are about 200 high schools and 5,000 students that participate in DECA. Outside of Ohio, DECA consists of more than 200,000 students from over 5,000 high schools in all 50 states and 9 countries. Our signature blue blazers, leadership activities, and our district, state, and national competitions are all part of the DECA program. The GLHS DECA Chapter is internationally recognized for the high level marketing projects our students have completed for area businesses. DECA is the heart of our marketing program, and probably the reason your son/daughter applied for the program.

Students have lots of choices regarding the type of marketing project they complete. Options exist in the areas of entrepreneurship, advertising, fashion promotion, sports marketing, and marketing research. Most projects are 20 typed pages, and are presented to business owners upon completion. These projects are presented and evaluated by business professionals at our state and international level competitions. Students have the option of completing a project by themselves or in a team with one or two classmates. Many students are able to use their marketing projects well beyond high school- for college courses, internship interviews, and even first career interviews. The finished quality of work is upper-college level.

I have your child for two periods a day, and most of our work is done in the classroom. Homework is very light, as are traditional pen-and-paper tests. But, this class will challenge your child in a different way. They are going to conduct research, analyze data, and then create a marketing plan that helps an area business solve a problem. And after they do this, they will present and defend their plan to business professionals. Students will be pushed to develop time management, creative thinking, problem solving, business writing, and lots of human relation skills. The busiest and most stressful time for your child will be the three week period before our state competition in late February and early March. During this time students will be editing and finalizing their written projects, and developing a professional presentation. They’ll be under firm deadlines to present their plan back to their businesses and me. There will be some evening and weekend hours during this stretch.

It’s really important our students look professional when they appear before the business people who serve as judges for our DECA competitions. The navy blue DECA blazer has to be worn during all official competitions, so students should select dress clothing that matches it. Here are my recommendations: Gents: Tan dress slacks, solid white or blue dress shirt, tie, and dress shoes. Guys will want to pack two dress shirts for our  national competition.  Ladies: A conservative skirt (grey or tan, & must be knee length),a solid white or blue blouse, and heels. During opening and closing DECA sessions and meetings, ladies will need to be in professional dress and can get away with a nice pair of pants, and those flat type shoes. You can see more pics of students in DECA dress on the bottom of this page.

This year’s ICDC is scheduled to be in Anaheim, CA from April 27 – May 1.  Students earn their way to the conference by being a top winner in their state DECA competition. The trip is a mix of leadership, competition, and fun for students. Our chapter will earn points based on the number of Top-10 finishes we claim, and for the past decade Gahanna DECA has finished among the top DECA Chapters in the world. You can get more ICDC info from DECA’s webpage here.

The true cost (transportation, conference registration, hotel) to attend the DECA ICDC is usually about $1,000 per student. We work really hard to bring this number down significantly. Store profits are used to help off-set student costs. Depending on our sales year, I can usually get the the trip cost I quote parents in March to around $550. From this point we brainstorm and do additional fundraising. Over the past few years we have sold advertising packages to local businesses to help further lower travel costs. The average price paid per student is typically about $300.  Money will be due on or before April 18, 2024.

You will receive a very general ICDC permission form immediately following the Ohio DECA State competition. This will be during the last week of March. A very detailed ICDC itinerary will be sent to you via email once all travel details are finalized- usually the first week of April.

Students in spring sports sometimes have tough choices to make. I leave it up to students and parents to decide if attending the ICDC is the best choice for them. I will say the experience of attending the DECA ICDC is usually the highlight of a student’s high school career. In a few cases I have had students fly solo coming to or departing the conference due to sports or school activities. The stars really have to align for this to happen due to student safety/liability issues and our travel and competition schedules.

If you own your own business I would love for you to share your “how I did it” story with our students. If you have contacts of area entrepreneurs who you think would be good speakers to seniors I would love your help connecting with them. Likewise, if you have contacts with marketing professionals or other upper- management professionals of area businesses I would greatly appreciate help connecting our students with them. The success of our student projects is greatly impacted by having strong contacts at our “client” businesses.