By Alex Costello
The program, which began this year, was created to teach students life skills that teachers and administrators thought they were not receiving in current classes.
"The feeling was that kids are being bombarded by credit card offers when they're getting to college, all of a sudden having to make decisions of buying cars, leasing cars, mortgages eventually," said Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown. "And we're really not preparing them for anything beyond the age of 18 that's going to affect them."
The course falls under the social studies department and is being incorporated into all of the Oceanside schools, with versions of it being taught in the elementary schools and the middle school as well.
Brown originally came up with the idea for the program and bounced it off other administrators and teachers. After receiving positive input from them, he brought it before the board of education, which thought that it was an idea worth pursuing and approved the class.
In the high school, three teachers volunteered to teach the class, meeting over the summer to discuss what would make a good course curriculum for students.
"The aim of the program is to have students gain a better appreciation for the impact of personal finance on their daily lives and have a better understanding of the world of personal finance," said Phil D'Elia, the social studies program supervisor for Oceanside High School. "Everything from just making good financial decisions, how to balance a budget, making career choices... a lot of it is really geared towards the practical side of personal finance."
Other components of the homegrown curriculum include the pros and cons of credit cards, taking out loans (especially student loans), the stock market, retirement plans, and more. "We can see, quite clearly, that learning about money and credit, and learning how these things work, seeing what's been going on these past few months, I think points to the importance of it," said D'Elia.
"One of my personal goals for the course is to get students to assess and reassess their goals and values," said Dan Radzicki, one of the teachers for the course. "When you're 16, 17 years old, one of your personal goals might be a Mustang or something that's kind of cool and flashy and in the moment, but you're not really thinking about how that's going to serve you when you're 25 or 35 or 45."
"So it's the idea that the students [are] going to be able to make informed decisions, not just to pick what they think is cool for the moment, but ideally they'll be a little bit reflective when they go to make a decision," he continued.
As Radzicki describes it, the curriculum comes from "real life."
"All of us have had to form a budget at some point," he said. "We've all had to sit down and say, 'I make this much a month, how am I going to make this work for me?'"
"We're using different readings that we have and we're asking the kids to do some activities to determine things," said Christine Valentino-Thurber, another teacher for the class. "I'm going to ask them to research three different banks and keep a worksheet on what the banks offer and what their fees are and for them to choose a bank that they think would be right for them and explain why. Things like that."
Since the class is a new requirement for graduation, the entire senior class at Oceanside High School is currently taking it. A few juniors have opted to take the class this year so they would not have to take it next year.
Students are learning from the course.
"We're not even through the first month of the year, and you're seeing kids realizing, maybe it's not worth the Starbucks coffee," said Radzicki. "Maybe it's 7-Eleven instead and you save $3 - that's the smarter call."
Comments about this story? ACostello@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 207.
