Fourth-and fifth-grade students from Longfellow Elementary School in Mitchell, South Dakota, won the National FBI Safe Online Surfing (FBI-SOS) award in the large school category for the month of December 2021. The students at Longfellow scored 92.12 percent to beat out every other participating school in the country in that category for the month. This is the second straight year that Longfellow has captured this award, besting their winning score of 91.60 from December 2020.

During December 2021, a total of 165,107 students in 2,064 schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands took the exam nationwide to compete for the award.

FBI Minneapolis Special Agent in Charge Michael Paul will present a certificate to the students during a presentation at the school at 9:00 a.m. Tuesday, February 15, 2022. The FBI-SOS Internet Challenge was developed with the assistance of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and with the input of teachers and schools. Anyone—young or old, in the U.S. or worldwide—can complete the activities on the FBI-SOS website. The testing and competition, however, are open only to students in grades 3-8 at public, private, or home schools in the United States and its territories.

The FBI-SOS initiative is a free, age-appropriate, competitive, and fun online program that promotes cyber citizenship and teaches students in third through eighth grades how to recognize and respond to online dangers—like Internet predators and cyberbullying—and covers topics such as social networking and gaming safety. Every month during the school year, the FBI recognizes the top-scoring schools in each of its three size categories, based on the number of students participating from each school.

To find out how to participate, visit: https://sos.fbi.gov/en/