Spokane — Washington lawmakers across the aisle want to require all public schools in the state to teach financial education.
State Treasurer Mike Pellicciotti and 22 state representatives are backing a bill to make that happen.
The proposed law would add financial education to the list of state-mandated high school graduation requirements. It would not change the total number of credits students need to graduate high school — 24 — but rather embed a half-credit’s worth of instruction into that existing total.
“Folks need to have financial education to be able to understand the complexities of the economic realities that exist today,” Pellicciotti told The Spokesman-Review. “Without that foundational education, folks would not be able to have the tools necessary to really economically thrive.”
In Washington, some schools already require financial education instruction, including districts in Pasco, Puyallup and Richland.
Mt. Spokane High School finance teacher David Pratt said he believes students he teaches are prepared to handle money well, but he thinks finance instruction should be universally required.
“The state, I think, needs to make finance mandatory for every kid to graduate,” Pratt said. “So whatever the needs may be for that to occur, let’s make that happen, because I don’t know if there’s another subject out there that has more implications than finance.”
At Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, some students do not feel their education equips them to handle money in the real world.
“I don’t feel prepared to manage my own personal finances,” senior Ali Dullanty said. “Because right now, I’ll have a summer job. I make money, and then I feel like I can spend it, when in reality I should probably save that money for future spending and support in case of an emergency. I should probably know which fancy banking accounts I should put it in, too.”
Senior Kate Sestero thinks financial education should be taught at school in tandem with other topics.
“I think in math classes it would be interesting to have, like a unit, and talk about taxes and such,” Sestero said. Or maybe each class we take could have an element of real life in it. So, history would talk about taxes, and math could talk about, I don’t know, compounding interests. It needs to be incorporated into the classes that we are already taking. I don’t think there’s enough room in our schedules to take a whole other class.”
Sestero’s concerns that another topic would not fit into the already-packed schedule of a high-schooler have been echoed by some educators. The proposed law allows for financial education to be embedded into other courses and subject areas and does not require schools to teach a separate class. But some teachers worry embedding new topics could spread things too thin.
Medical Lake Teachers’ Union president Ryan Grant said when the state asks schools to embed new topics in curricula, it can be hard to find space. As an example, Grant said the state requires Washington history be taught in schools, and he’s not sure the topic always gets the attention it deserves when it’s embedded into a U.S. history class.
“It’s where the intention meets reality,” Grant said. “If you intend for kids to get this education, then you have to make it a requirement. But the reality is, there are only so many hours in a day.”
Grant said financial literacy would pair nicely with the home economics education requirement that existed back when he was growing up.
“If they had another math credit that was required, I could also see that working,” he said. “I think financial education is a great topic, but if you embed it in an existing course, what is the trade-off? It’s easy to say that they will embed something, but it’s harder to find the class that they will embed it in.”
Rep. Skyler Rude, R-Walla Walla, is the bill’s prime sponsor. He said lawmakers took workloads into consideration when drafting the bill.
“A lot of the groundwork has already been laid,” Rude said, adding that some districts in the state have already adopted a financial education mandate, showing it is possible within the confines of other graduation requirements.
“This legislation has been percolating for years now,” Rude said. “It wasn’t a new conversation.”
The bill also carries support from Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, D-Seattle, who chairs the House Education Committee, and local lawmaker Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane.
“It’s just become clear that financial education is really critical,” Riccelli said. “We have folks going into college and huge debt loads. We have folks getting into car loans. This is long overdue.”
At Ridgeline High School in Liberty Lake, senior Connor Harvey said he thinks his school could do a lot more to teach students about financial independence.
“The school system as a whole has not really prepared me well to finance my money, but I did have an amazing teacher who brought in a guest speaker to talk about it a little bit,” Harvey said.
He suggested making those guest speakers a regular occurrence might solve the problem.
“Maybe just having people that know how to finance money come in and give advice,” Harvey said. “And having other classes talk about it, too.”
Spokesman-Review high school correspondents Isabelle Parekh, Paige Van Buren and Luke Blue contributed to this report.
Ellen Dennis’ work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper’s managing editor.
