ROCKINGHAM — Students entering ninth grade in the 2020-2021 school year will be required to complete a financial literacy course before graduating high school following the passage of House Bill 924 in August 2019.
The course, called Economics and Personal Finance, will cover the concepts of borrowing money, dealing with debt, managing credit and mortgages. The course has not yet been fully developed and will cause all Social Studies course to undergo changes in order to accommodate the new course.
These changes will be up for approval at the state level in February, according to Donna Gephart, director of English and Social Studies for Richmond County Schools.
The changes to be considered will be combining American History I and II into one course, changing the name of the “American History: Founding Principles, Civics and Economics” course to “Found Principles of the United States and North Carolina: Civic Literacy.”
RCS Social Studies teachers will have to get new certifications to teach the Economics and Personal Finance course, Gephart said. The board also approved new CTE courses: Computer Science I and II, Business Management II, Entrepreneurship II, Project Management I and II, and Financial Planning I and II. These and the financial literacy course will go into the course guide, pending final approval.