Washington seems likely to keep financial literacy class

WASHINGTON — School officials have completed a first reading of a policy that would maintain personal finance class as a requirement to graduate from the Washington School District, despite a recently enacted state law that allows schools to drop the class and install its curriculum in other courses.

While they acknowledged the potential for redundancy and struggles of some other districts finding qualified teachers, Washington school board members last week said they considered the class unconditionally essential to students’ success.

“I’m not on the fence,” school board member Mindi Rees said. “Everybody in this world has to deal with money. It doesn’t do us any good if we make it easier for our kids to graduate, and then they don’t know how to be out in the world.”

Guidance staff from the district said they understood board members’ thinking, but said there were some good reasons to consider removing the course as a graduation requirement.

School Counselor Belinda Robinson urged decision-makers to weigh the implications of a required course on graduation rates.

“I agree that this is a class that students need, I think they need this information,” she said. “The only thing that pushes me over the fence is … it’s to give more flexibility, it’s one less requirement that a student has to meet in order to graduate, because we’re trying to get more students to graduate.”

Superintendent Willie Stone said removing the requirement could help free up schedules, both for the instructor who teaches it with roughly half his time during the school year, and for students who already know the material.

“What if you have kids that, their families talk to them about compounding interest, they teach them how to keep a checkbook, they teach them what credit cards can do, about positive compounding interest, negative compounding interest,” he said. “You’re going to make that kid sit in a class that, they know 90% of the class already … it’s an amazing class, but at the same time, it limits what we’re able to offer our students.”

School board members, however, were less conflicted about keeping the graduation requirement intact.

Board president Troy Suchan said 90% of constituents he’d spoken to favored leaving the course as a prerequisite to graduate, while board member Jim Almelien said he saw the benefits of retirement planning lessons from personal experience.

Like counselors, school board member Sonia Leyva said she expected plenty of students would still take the class as an elective if it were optional. Still, she said she worried that approach would leave too many behind.

“If we take the requirement away, the ones that need it the most would be the ones that choose not to take it,” she said.

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com