Empowering Students to be Financially Savvy

[January 13, 2022] La Casa de Don Pedro not only helps prepare our alternative high school students to obtain their high school diploma and get ready for high education or trade school, we are also dedicated to making sure they are money smart!

One value of La Casa’s comprehensive approach to community development is that we have a team of experts in many program areas – all focused on helping our community advance. Dante Lara, La Casa’s HUD Certified Housing Counselor, has been teaching La Casa’s LEAD Charter School students how to be financially savvy.

Dante uses Money Smart For Young People (Grades 9-12), a comprehensive curriculum from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) . Students learn topics such as Income Management/Spending and Budgeting, Entrepreneurship, Credit, Career Options, Understanding the Economy, Retirement Planning, Investing and more. Dante’s student centered approach helps him connect and relate to his students, ensuring they enjoy and retain the complex and vital information.

“The financial literacy workshops are a great component to our program. The workshops teach students the basics of budgeting, saving, investing, taxes, and much more. These workshops are a crucial piece to our curriculum because we want to ensure that when students leave La Casa and LEAD, they feel prepared to make informed financial decisions on their own. Dante and his team do an awesome job at making these workshops fun and engaging for our students. We are very grateful to be able to provide this opportunity to our students, an opportunity they may not have otherwise been exposed to in a traditional high school setting.” Says Nathalie Garcia, Program Coordinator

Says Samuel a LEAD student, “I like the financial literacy workshops because it’s different. They are fun. We get to know how to be financially smart and stable with our money. We also learn about to how properly save our money, the steps we would need to take to open a business, and how to budget our money. Dante also brings pizza so that’s a plus!”

While the program is currently offered remotely, but we look forward to returning to in person classes when the dangers of the Omicron variant subsides.