FCCLA, also known as the Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America, is a community that prioritizes helping the community in various ways, often being a central hub for community service and providing support to others. 

The members of FCCLA are closely knit, tackling services together with the help of their advisor Dr. Cassie Mueller.  

“FCCLA has a planning process, so if we want to do something that benefits our community, we will walk through the steps of that planning process,” Mueller said. 

Competitions such as STARR (Students Taking Action and Receiving Recognition) allow anyone within FCCLA to compete. Members choose from 32 different categories such as baking and pastry, entrepreneurship, childhood education, and many more. 

“My students decided to do a chapter service project, so that everyone in the chapter can be a part of it,” Mueller said. “Whereas some of the events are really more like job interviews, with one person.” 

Students can earn a bronze, silver, or gold medal in their category. To get a gold medal a student needs at least 90/100, and to qualify for Nationals a student needs at least a silver medal. 

“If you have the highest score out of everyone in your category, you are named the national representative,” Mueller said. 

Competitors Sandy Le, Bourna Souerng and Leilani Mausisa won first place, and are our National Representatives for Washington State. 

“It was successful; we got a total of 200 pieces of clothing. It wasn’t just coats, it was also sweaters, gloves, hats, things like that,” Bounra Souerng said. 

They worked as a team, setting up a fully functional coat drive entirely without funding. 

“It was all free; we used boxes,” Souerng said. “The bags and printing paper were all donated from the school.” 

They also had used a large amount of advertising to let the drive be known. Souerng says it was a ton of fun, and a good place to talk to people and get to know everyone. Souerng describes the experience as “nerve-wracking”. 

“We made a lot of posters, and our advisor lets a lot of teachers know about the coat drive, so they can inform others,” Souerng said. “We also had VNN broadcast it.” 

Sandy Le, although not having plans to go to Nationals, says that there’s plenty of people who want to go to nationals. 

“The people who are running for officers next year wanted to go. And I think we gave them the chance to go and compete,” Le said. 

The coat drive that Le worked on was in a category called the “chapter service project”. 

“We prepared for a month and put everything together on the board within a week,” Le said. “The flyers were all over the school.” 

Le explains that the FCCLA community is super close. 

“I talk to all the members that go into the club, and I try to be friends with all of them.” 

Because the FCCLA community is so close, it allows for a warm atmosphere. 

“I think it’s a place where people can just hang out and not be stressed,” Le said. “They can go and explore more opportunities and build connections with other people.”  

Evaluators from several FCCLA school districts all come in to score the competitors, from PHS, FCCLA members Jeff Celestino, Aydan Hat, Delilah Pheann, and Angela Legaspi were all sent to evaluate.  

“They were scored on a rubric, and I would put up timecards when they presented,” Celestino said. 

Celestino says it can often be “extremely close” when it comes to the competitors. 

Hat was proud of the first-place winners from PHS.  

“They were doubting themselves, and boom, they got first place,” Hat said. 

He says they all travelled in one CTE van, sleeping and listening to music on the way to the competition. 

“It was nice seeing the other side of Washington,” Hat said. 

This competition was the first time that Pheann met the majority of the officers. 

“I got to know them, and they got to know me,” Pheann said. 

Pheann went on to help pick one person to represent the category, choosing them for Nationals.  

“It wasn’t stressful. The person I was working with had evaluated for three years now,” Pheann said. “I really clicked with them.” 

Pheann had participated in the STARR events before, so it wasn’t as daunting. 

“When I went to the STARR event in Sumner, that one was overwhelming,” Pheann said.