A bipartisan bill sponsored by state Sen. Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick, that would require Maine high schoolers to take a finance class has stalled.
Daughtry’s bill, L.D. 1284, would mandate high schoolers take a semester-long, standalone, personal-finance literacy class in order to graduate.
The Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee reviewed the bill and lawmakers recently agreed to delay action on it until the next legislative session pending more research. Daughtry was disappointed with the decision.
“I’ll keep working on it,” she said, adding the committee wants to study high school curriculum requirements to determine if a personal finance course would fit.
Currently, the Maine Department of Education requires personal finance be taught alongside history, government and civics during two years of social studies. That doesn’t go far enough, according to Daughtry and the bill’s co-sponsors, who include Republican state Sen. Matt Pouliot; Democratic state Sens. David LaFountain, Tim Nangle and Joe Rafferty; Democratic state Rep. Edward Crockett; and Republican state Rep. David Woodsome.
Pouliot said the time teachers spend on personal finance varies wildly.
“Quality of education should not be dependent on ZIP code,” Pouliot previously told The Times Record. “People are being crippled by debt in this country … (This bill) can help on a practical level more than the Pythagorean theorem.”
The Maine Education Association union, the Maine School Boards Association and the Maine Principals’ Association oppose the bill, arguing personal finance is already being taught in schools and that the bill would remove local control from school districts.
“It seems unnecessary to require an additional course, and it could prove challenging for many schools and many students to incorporate this into their schedules,” Maine Education Association President Grace Leavitt testified during a public hearing on the bill in May. “It would likely mean that students would have to forego another option in order to add this course when the matter is already addressed in their social studies classes.”
Nineteen states require high schoolers to take a personal finance course to graduate. In New England, New Hampshire and Rhode Island have the requirement, while Connecticut lawmakers passed similar legislation last month.
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