The Prince George’s County Board of Education is going against the wishes of Maryland State Comptroller Peter Franchot by not making financial literacy mandatory for graduation from the county’s public schools.
“There is no problem whatsoever with making this a graduation requirement,” Prince George’s County Public Schools superintendent William Hite said during a Feb. 9 school board meeting. “The problem, however, is with making it a mandatory requirement that is unfunded.”
Board Vice-Chairwoman Peggy Higgins agreed with Hite saying the county allowing this requirement wouldn’t be contrary to exercising its own brand of financial literacy.
“The position is for our own financial literacy we would say no to $4 million and 65 (new positions),” she said.
The 65 new positions in the school system at a cost of $4 million come at a difficult time for a school system that has had to make cuts recent years. It’s a cost that the county would have to cover on its own.
The school system has already mplemented financial literacy throughout its high school curriculum, which Hite says is more than sufficient to prepare students for life in the real world.
At Parkdale High School, for example, students operate a student-run branch of Capital One Bank. Hite says that program is showing progress and he hopes that he’ll be able to run all county students through that or a similar program in the future.
Franchot, however, disagrees. He says full-blown financial literacy courses offered to students in the 11th and 12th grades are the most effective way to make sure students are prepared to make sound decisions with their money once they leave the care of their parents. He says the process of “embedding” financial literacy over the course of students’ high school career isn’t nearly as effective.
“All I’m saying is the data that I see supports the necessity to have something that really focuses seniors as they are about to go out into college and the workforce with the basic building blocks,” Franchot said at a recent Maryland Board of Public Works meeting.
Franchot says a course would be especially beneficial now given the pressure on state leaders to create certain types of economic development within the county.
“I notice a lot of leaders are demanding, in effect, that Prince George’s get some casino gambling. I would like to just respectfully suggest that I would love to see a financial literacy graduation requirement and finance academies built near all those gambling parlors where people are so hungry to have them.
“This is the future of Prince George’s – entrepreneurial success,” he continued.
Despite Franchot’s urging, the school board still voted no. After voting not support the measure, board Chairwoman Verjeana Jacobs laughed as she told Hite “I’m sure you will explain this to our comptroller. He will not like that.”
