GROVETOWN, Ga. () – The Columbia County Chamber of Commerce presented the local round of the 2025 National Civics Bee.

The Civics Bee took place at Grovetown High School and featured 20 Middle School students from across the CSRA. 

These students were selected after submitting essays about their ideas on how to improve their local community. 

I spoke with the President and CEO of the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce, Russell Lahodny, about the importance of students being educated in civics. 

“I think one of the biggest things for us is we want to make sure that we have kids who are educated, and we want to build good citizens. This is a great opportunity to get them involved to start understanding what it means to be a good citizen and even what it might mean to be a leader themselves in their community, and I think this is a great way to do it.” said Lahodny.

Civics is the understanding of the government process as well as the rights and duties of being a citizen in the United States. 

Lahodny said it great to see these students taking an interest in our government. 

“Now we get an opportunity to see really what their education is on that level, but again to me it’s the excitement that they’ve gotten out of the competition just to this point and to have that opportunity to move on to the state round possibly and even the national round.” Lahodny said,

The judges were Dr. Tom Clark with Fort Eisenhower, Jodi Lott who is a former Georgia State Representative and Dr. Jackson Drumgoole with WellStar Health.

While the competition is an analysis of the students it is also a display of the teachers.

“I think it’s a great reflection of our schools, I think the participation, they really appreciated the program and what we were doing and they really expressed a lot of excitement over it.” said Lahodny.

The top 3 students from the event will advance to the state finals in Atlanta with the potential to move on to the national championships in Washington D.C.