May 16, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced the results of this year’s High School Fed Challenge, which is an academic paper competition in which student teams researched and analyzed an economic theme, then wrote podcast scripts reflecting their research. The selected podcast scripts will be published in this year’s Journal of Future Economists, to be released this summer. The High School Fed Challenge is an educational program that aims to encourage students in grades 9-12 to learn more about economics and promote interest in economics as a subject for study and the basis for a career.

The theme of this year’s competition was the "Economics of Work." Social Studies teacher Anthony Pesca and his students chose to focus their research paper on diving into the topic of tipping culture for submission and evaluation by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The competition includes schools that are in the 2nd Federal reserve district which includes all of New York State, the 12 northern counties of New Jersey, parts of Connecticut, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Of all the submissions, there were only 4 papers chosen for publication from New York and only 2 from Long Island: one of which was CSH High School – amazing!

This year's team included a highly motivated and hard-working group of students which included, Saami Ali, Zabelle Bobelian, Charly Coden, Kathleen Engel, Ethan Eoanidis, Ian Smith and Amber Zhou. These students worked from December through March researching and completing their paper entitled Tipping Culture: A Comparative Analysis which will be published in the Journal of Future Economists this summer. Each student, as well as the Jr./Sr. High School, will receive a printed copy of the journal. Mr. Pesca shared, “While each year of the competition I have had high caliber, dedicated students, this year's team has been especially dedicated to their research. They truly deserve all of the accolades they receive.”