Personal financial literacy is set to become a required class for the district.
During an August board meeting, Assistant Superintendent Laura Jackson said the personal financial literacy course is already in place and making it a requirement would affect the freshman class and all subsequent classes.
East High School business education teacher Allison Holtzer said the course is currently elective, but she has heard support for making it a required course. Allison explained some young people “are making mistakes (financial) early on, which is just setting them up for failure later on.”
The goal of making it a required class would be to give all students a solid financial literacy foundation.
“We are trying to help this upcoming generation,” Holtzer said. She explained in the last decade there has been an increase in non-traditional credit use with interest rates between 300-1,000 percent and that 54 percent of Wisconsin residents live paycheck to paycheck.
The course is typically taken by juniors and seniors, but is open to sophomores. More than half of Wisconsin school districts make the course a requirement.
There are some other good additions and changes to the course catalog, but financial literacy is critical. I’m glad to see the coming change.
As long as it has good curriculum.