By Brett Baligad, Senior Editor

The Entrepreneurship Pathway opens its doors to the student body, offering the entire campus the opportunity to learn financial literacy. 

Although the Financial Literacy course has already been around since 2018, the course was exclusive to the Entrepreneurship Pathway seniors by coordinators Mr. Bryce Weiglin and Mr. Shane Beatty. In collaboration with President Dr. Wickstrom, Mr. Weiglin felt that it was necessary that all students be able to graduate with financial literacy.

“Financial literacy at SJB teaches students the basics of money management: budgeting, saving, debt, investing, giving and more,” said Mr. Weiglin. “That knowledge lays a foundation for students to build strong money habits early on and avoid many of the mistakes that lead to lifelong money struggles.”

This course will be offered in-person and virtually in partnership with SJB Global. SJB Global is Bosco’s new online schooling platform that may potentially have students enrolling across the world. This is a major change in Salesian education, extending the boundaries and wisdom St. John Bosco has to offer.

“It’s important to empower the next generation and teach them to handle their money wisely. We want our kids, and honestly all students to beat the statistics. This course will be offered online for non-SJB students as well, to allow for a much greater reach,” said Mr. Weiglin.

The Entrepreneurship Pathway was founded in 2015 in partnership with the prestigious Wharton School of Business. The pathway offers a wide variety of classes including Small Business Management, Advertising & Promotion and Social Entrepreneurship. The most notable course is, in fact, Financial Literacy taught senior year. This became particularly prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the course was opened up to the entire senior class regardless of enrollment in the Entrepreneurship Pathway.

The next few year’s success would help the administration determine that it would be in their best interest to further open the course to all grade levels this school year. To cap off this announcement, it was decided that the class of 2027 would be the first graduating class to require Financial Literacy to graduate. 

With the school year in full swing, students are ready to see what the class has in store for them.

“I am really excited to see what we will learn this year. We are going to learn from real world experiences. Just today we were learning how to write checks and balance budgets on Google Sheets. These are all essential skills we need in adulthood,” senior and Entrepreneurship Pathway member Carter Daley said.

Overall, there is more to the class than making money. The intangibles emphasized in the course are unmatched.

“Personal finance is 20% knowledge and 80% behavior,” Mr. Weiglin said. “Throughout the course, I remind students of what I find to be the most important take-away, ‘Live within your means.’  So while it’s important that a financial literacy course teaches money lessons, it’s more important to give students an actionable plan to manage their personal finances.”