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There’s a lot of buzz at Hallandale Magnet High School as students prepare to take notes for the first ever AP Financial Literacy Course. The class was unveiled this school year by College Board and Intuit for Education.
The course, called AP Business with Personal Finance is one Marcia Notkin, the Business Education Teacher at Hallandale Magnet High School is excited to teach.
“I’m excited about the opportunity of giving kids real-world experiences that they can take savings. Stock market investing. It’s packed,” said Notkin.
In its first year, the course is being offered at more than 15 schools in Miami-Dade County and seven in Broward County. Six of the Broward County schools are only offering the course through their Career Technical Education pathway.
That’s the case for the students at Hallandale High School. The select students will not only learn about finance, accounting and investing, but how to create a business plan and business, all while getting college credit.
Tariyah Knowles, a junior, crochets custom items and recently opened her own LLC.
“I really need help with taxes,” explained Knowles. “I don’t know how to pay taxes with my business, so I’m learning about that in this course.”
Freshman Skylar Lees has a pet sitting business.
“I wanted to kind of build that a little bit more in this class. And I’m also excited to learn about how to kind of build more on to other business ideas to,” Skylar said.
Then there’s students like Avenir Pigida. In his classroom he shows his phone, “It’s right now checking what I have for school, what is missing,” Pigida explained. Because of this class, he’s created an artificial intelligence homework helper to help students with busy schedules stay on top of what they need to complete.
It’s just one of the many things he’s excited to do for this course.
“I will be able to learn things such as market shares, trends, pie charts, how to read them because most people don’t even know how to understand what a economical advantages or a business advantage or a barrier to entry is,” Pigida said. “They’re just like, I’m gonna start a business without knowing anything. I’ll have more knowledge for my future life, for the business I’m trying to start for my entire goals in life.”
Florida is one of 30 states that requires high school students to take a financial literacy course. While this new AP course is being offered at many schools this year across South Florida, each school has different requirements or prerequisites needed to take the new AP class.
