PINE GROVE -- Valley High School's RAZE program is going strong, explained Principal Shawn Coen.

The club is very active at the school and promotes an anti-tobacco message.

Junior Lesta Kocher is featured in a television commercial airing throughout the state, Coen said.

Club activities have included attending school sporting events and distributing T-shirts and flyers helping to promote the anti-tobacco message.

The school advocates peer mediation, in which students can meet with their peers and try to resolve conflicts instead of resorting to fighting, she said.

Students also have served as junior counselors to the local elementary school.

The school's land judging team from the school's FFA club is traveling to Oklahoma to compete in the national competition.

Last spring, FFA member and student Phillip Dennison's eight-pound bacon, that he had raised as a pig and had cured, brought in the record price of $800 at the state FFA competition, she said.

The school recently received $7,500 worth of Dance Dance Revolution equipment to be used by the physical education classes.

"They love it," the principal said.

The school received a WVACHE grant to fund student tours of local college campuses and for special activities such as financial aid nights, she said.

Coen was one of the first five pilot recipients of a new state SEED (Student Educational and Economic Development Success) grant of $75,000 to invest in the program over three years.

In a press release announcing the program West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin explained that SEEDS is a volunteer mentoring program that partners a public school principal with a seasoned business leader and master educator to help turn around a struggling school.

The objective of SEEDS is to create leaders who have the skills and experience not only to improve conditions in their own schools but to drive change throughout the public school system, he said.

Coen's mentor in the program is Elizabeth Kraftician, CEO of Touchstone Research Laboratory in Triadelphia.

The school's landscaping now features the bell from the first Pine Grove School, which the school's Partners in Education worked in to the new landscaping.

Valley High School has 224 students in grades 9-12 and is located at 1 Lumberjack Lane in Pine Grove, West Virginia. For more information call 304-889-3151 or go online to the school's Web site at www.vhs.wetz.k12.wv.us.