JACKSON, Miss.—A financial literacy bill that would require all high school students to take one semester of finance studies seems it won’t make it out of the Senate’s Education Committee now.
State Treasurer Lynn Fitch has been pushing the bill heavily over the last several weeks.
Fitch spoke about the bill in an earlier radio interview this week.
“It would provide the opportunity for our children to learn personal finance,” she said.
The classes would be an overview of what many kids aren’t prepared for after getting into the working world regarding finances.
“Buying power, spending, taxes, and savings [would be covered.]”
The chairmen of the Senate Education Committee Senator Gray Tollison of District 9 said in a radio interview on Friday that the bill would be killed in committee.
“There’s no need because we provide that,” he said in regards to why the classes shouldn’t be mandated.
While all high schools are indeed required to offer such classes now, they aren’t mandatory for students to take them under the curriculum.
“The Department of Education requires that every school provide it and currently 6,000 are enrolled in those courses,” Tollison said Friday.
According to the State Treasurer’s office there were currently just under 5,900 students that took the course in the 2011-2012 school year and only amounts to 4.9% of all the students in the state.
“It should be a choice on whether a student wants to take that or not,” stated Tollison.
It looks like that choice will remain in place for students in the state now.
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