CHS Safe Driving Committee places 1st in You Ride, You Decide safe Driving Competition
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The Chester High School Safe Driving Committee has been actively involved in a safe driving campaign titled, "You Ride, You Decide…It's a Matter of Choice" since December 1, 2009.
The focus of the initiative was to keep students and members of the community safe throughout the holidays and to encourage them to not drink and drive or ride with anyone who has been drinking and driving.
The program was sponsored by the Illinois Department of Transportation, CHOICE, the Illinois Distributing Company and Southwestern Illinois College. A total of 17 schools in Southern Illinois and the Metro-East area competed in this project to see who could create the most effective campaign to keep drivers safe and sound over the 2009 Christmas and New Year's holidays.
The Chester High School group attended a presentation banquet January 29 at Our Lady of the Snows Shrine in Belleville, Illinois to showcase their program. Wednesday February 10 the group once again traveled to Belleville, this time for an awards night to find out who was the 2009-2010 best-of-the-best.
Chester's efforts paid off in two distinct dividends. First of all each and foremost, every student at CHS came back safe and sound following the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Secondly, the Chester High School program was judged to be in the highest category of possible points by a panel of SWIC, CHOICE and IDOT judges.
The result…CHS was awarded a $1,000 check from the You Ride, You Decide program for 1st place. The prize money is to be used by CHS to further create a safe driving effort throughout the rest of the 2009-2010 school year.
Most likely a safe prom theme will be the target of most of the prize money as nationally prom time and graduation time are the two most dangerous times of the year for students making poor decisions related to drinking and driving.
The safe driving projects submitted by the participating schools were judged on ten primary areas and tem points were attached to each area. Chester received all tem points per area for a total of 100 points. That is the maximum number of points that could be earned.
Five participating schools received all 100 points, so judges then went a step further a devised a method of awarding 10 bonus points to try and determine a top prize winner. After going through the bonus system, Chester was still tied with the original five schools as each school received the 10 bonus points.
After much deliberation it was decided to award the top prize of $1,000 to all five of the top schools. Project Director, Dale Zink, of SWIC stated at the awards presentation, "Our goal is to save lives and award more money to schools to be used for further safe driving efforts, so we decided to give all five top schools the $1,000 grand prize. All five were the best and all five deserve to be the grand prize winners!"
The top five schools to earn the grand prize status included Chester High School, Belleville East High School, Belleville West High School, Civic Memorial High School and Granite City High School. Chester was the smallest of the schools to earn the top award.
The remaining 10 schools were presented with 2nd place awards of $800.00 each to continue their safe driving efforts the rest of the year. Those remaining schools include Althoff High School, Alton High School, Cahokia Senior High School, Cahokia East High School, East Alton/Wood River High School, Gibault High School, Highland High School, O'Fallon High School, Red Bud High School, and Waterloo High School. Two schools withdrew from the competition.
Chester High School had a committee of 19 members who actively took part in the project including Jamie Chambers and Jamey Watkins, Co-Chairpersons, Sam Higgerson, Cedric Williams, Ashley Essman, Morgan Griffith, Courtney Johnson, Allie Schmerbauch, Rachel Young, Chad Koenegstein, Laura Liefer, Sam Barton, Morgan Colvis, Dani Homan, Taylor Marks, Rebecca Young, Brett Barthol, Jamie Long and Brant McMillan.
Dr. Jim Beers, CHS Wellness Coordinator, served as the Program Administrator for the Safe Driving Campaign. The committee was assisted by numerous other students at CHS with various aspects of the safe driving effort.
The group is now involved in the 2nd phase of their efforts titled, "Operation Teen Safe Driving", which is a state-wide effort sponsored by IDOT, Ford Motor Company, Allstate Foundation and numerous other agencies. The second phase deals with various other primary aspects of teen safe driving and will continue throughout the rest of the school year.