Perham BPA students compete on national stage in Nashville

Four Perham High School students reached Business Professionals of America’s national stage in Nashville after a 29-student chapter push through the Minnesota competition ladder, a showing that points to the next generation of business and technology talent in Otter Tail County.

Perham-Dent Public Schools said 29 Perham students competed at the Minnesota Business Professionals of America State Leadership Conference in March at the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis, and four earned spots at nationals. That path matters beyond trophies. BPA bills itself as the nation’s leading career and technical student organization for students headed into business management, information technology, finance, accounting, office administration and related fields, the same broad skill set that shapes hiring in offices, banks, shops and service businesses across the county.

The national competition gave those students a much larger benchmark. BPA’s 2026 National Leadership Conference ran May 6-10 in Nashville, Tennessee, and the organization said nearly 7,000 members from across the world took part. BPA described the five-day event as a mix of competition, recognition, networking and professional growth, and 2026 marked the group’s 60th anniversary. The conference theme, “Amplify Your Impact,” fit a program built around career readiness as much as medals.

Minnesota’s state conference, which sent the Perham qualifiers onward, depends on volunteer judges from the business community. That structure helps explain why BPA is more than an extracurricular club. Students are not only rehearsing presentations and studying finance concepts; they are being evaluated by adults who work in the fields students may enter after high school, a direct link between schoolwork and the labor market.

For Perham, that makes the Nashville trip a workforce story as much as a school story. A small chapter in a small town sent four students into a national field that stretched far beyond Otter Tail County, and the scale of the event suggests the level of competition those students faced. BPA already has its next national conferences on the calendar, with Denver set for 2027, Orlando for 2028 and Washington, D.C., for 2029, keeping the organization’s pipeline of business-trained students moving from local classrooms to national arenas.