The Parrish Community Chapter of FFA held their first meeting of the year on Wednesday, Sept. 16. The meeting went over important updates and upcoming events. They also got to know each other by playing Minute to Win It games.

Future Farmers of America is a national organization for youth leadership and agricultural education. While rooted in farming heritage, FFA is for any student interested in science, business, technology, veterinary medicine, environmental science, and engineering.

As a student led organization, a lot of the work falls on the officers and the officers at Parrish have already begun the work for this year.

Chapter President Sophia Gagliano, says she is “looking forward to seeing how the freshman group will do because there are a lot more new freshman than [she was] expecting,” She is excited to see how active they will be, what they will participate in, and how they will impact the chapter.

One thing Gagliano hopes to do this year is change their program of activities. This includes coming up with more activities and expanding the ones that worked better to really make sure that the chapter is doing well with community service and all that they do.

Sentinel Savannah Primrose says she is “looking forward to making connections and participating in contests” this year.

Second Vice President Sophia Austine, says she is most looking forward to “going to all the leadership conferences this year and going to the national and state conventions.” She is also excited to meet and help new members.

Austine says she feels like last year they had the same people competing in the same competitions, so her goal is to try and get more people to be more involved and interested in doing different competitions. 

The officer team would like to note that FFA is an amazing program with lots of opportunities and it is a great place for anyone to be involved.

If you would like to learn more about or join FFA at Parrish, speak to any of the agricultural teachers, Grainger, Greene, or Gallegos in Building 5.

Reporter Caroline Steward writes monthly newsletters recapping the events of FFA. Below is her Summer/August article:

"PCHS FFA has kicked the year off with a bang. This August, the Parrish Community FFA Chapter had their annual barn clean up before the swine came in. The barn members worked together to bring our barn back to the high standard. Then in early September, our FFA chapter had their new member meeting which allowed the freshman of our chapter to adapt before the first regular meeting. Now, Parrish Community FFA is kicking things into high gear by having multiple CDE interest meetings allowing students to see if they would like to compete in the various events. Our FFA chapter officers met before school started to plan activities and meetings for the year ahead to continue the tradition of the FFA. Lastly, we had our first general FFA meeting, at the meeting we talked about how to order FFA jackets, all things fair, CDE's and LDE’s, and to wrap up the meeting our members got to learn some interesting facts about our officer team."