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School District 1 considers adding financial class to graduation requirements
Sheridan County School District 1 trustees are considering making financial knowledge a requirement for graduation from high school.
Trustees discussed the possibility in a work session this week, although a decision won’t be made until a regular session of the school board. District 1 Superintendent Pete Kilbride said the course would focus on what he called “financial literacy.”
He said the district already provides a one-semester life skills course in the district’s Big Horn and Tongue River high schools. The proposal being considered is to expand the life skills course into two semesters with the current life skills curriculum in the first semester and the financial component in the second.
Kilbride said students in both high schools would still have six and a half credits for electives.
He said the proposal to make the financial course a graduation requirement is because the school district believes students need to understand how to navigate such actions as getting credit from a bank or getting a loan, and what putting big numbers on a credit card actually means.
He said putting more intense focus on personal finance in the high schools has actually been under discussion for the last couple of years.
Cindy Livingston
July 9, 2020 at 10:54 am
Hopefully this will include leaving behind the mindset that if a purchase fits the monthly budget then it is a good purchase instead of looking at the overall cost of the item once it is paid for. Also, I hope it would go into the fact that everyone has the opportunity to become a millionaire and that is dependent upon delayed gratification, saving and investing and fiscal responsibility. A class like that would be beneficial to the entire Country as a whole. For most of us, we messed up and now have to dig our way out of the hole that we are in but teaching this in high school would give our youth an opportunity not to start digging in the first place!