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South Kitsap High School senior Kaylie Peterson wasn’t certain what career path to pursue after high school — until she became a teller at a Kitsap Credit Union branch. The branch, located right at the school, employs several students like Peterson, who spend part of their lunch break as tellers.
“I’m a spender; when I get my money, it’s gone,” Peterson says. “But I’m trying to change that… Having the branch in the school is convenient.”
Peterson, who now plans to pursue a career in banking, was one of several tellers interviewed in April by JA’s Biz Kid$, a television show that will air on PBS this fall. The show, made in partnership with Junior Achievement, is produced by the award-winning team who produced Bill Nye the Science Guy and is underwritten by America’s Credit Unions.
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PBS crew taping students at South Kitsap High School.
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“We just want to teach kids it’s OK to take a risk, it’s OK to follow your passion, it’s OK to do something that’s not mundane,” says the show’s executive producer and director James McKenna, who said the idea was initially met with just as much skepticism as the Bill Nye the Science Guy idea once was.
McKenna has been looking for an opportunity to do a financial education show for many years. JA’s Biz Kid$ will show a lot of success stories about kids running businesses and having cool jobs, and will educate kids about job readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy.
One of the young entrepreneurs to be featured in an episode is Rebecca Charbonneau, who opened The Candy Shoppe in downtown Port Orchard with her mother in 2001. Charbonneau was a teen when she had the idea for a candy store, and since the store opened it had become a popular downtown attraction.
The Seattle-based show is traveling all around the country to talk to kids and find success stories. They came to Kitsap after hearing about the high school branches Kitsap Credit Union operates. “We thought it was a unique story because there’s a credit union in a high school,” McKenna said. “It turns out there are a lot of credit unions in high schools across the country.”
Kitsap CU has branches at South Kitsap and Bremerton high schools that perform basic transactions and offer information about services. The students were selected for the unpaid positions through an interview process.
“They (student customers) treat as like professionals, and we treat them like we would any customer,” says SKHS teller Sara Salpsgaver. “It’s a little slower pace but we do the same things (as other branches).”
The high school branches are part of the credit union’s educational outreach, which also includes free classes, both for high school students at the schools and for the community.
“Education is one of our highest values,” says Cathy Brorson, Kitsap Credit Union’s marketing specialist and youth programs coordinator, who helped coordinate the filming locations for the crew. “The campus branches are not for profit, but are solely an educational outreach for the students and complement the financial education in the classroom.”
The financial literacy classes range from financial planning and budget to credit management, insurance and ID theft.
Arielle Evans, a student teller at SKHS, says working at the branch was a great learning opportunity for her, as well as a chance to help educate other students. “At our age in high school, we like to spend, and this gives us the opportunity to save and learn how to do it,” she says. “We’ve opened a lot of new accounts that will hopefully help students save money and look at money in a different way.”
The Kitsap CU youth programs are also helping young entrepreneurs like Charbonneau. She says she learned about good money management from the credit union, where she originally was a Kids Club member. Lindsey Porter, another Kitsap CU teen member who was interviewed by Bis Kid$, has been saving up money from three jobs, and using some of the savings to pay for pigs through the Future Farmers of America program. Porter buys the pigs, raises them for five months and then sells them, earning back four times as much.
Brorson says, “The Biz Kid$ show is teaching that financial literacy is cool and managing your money is cool, and anybody can be a biz kid.”. |
