On June 4, the Vermont state treasurer, the financial regulation commissioner and the deputy education secretary gathered in the same room — but not to talk policy. They’d come to Winooski High School to listen to students give their final presentations in a personal finance course.
Courtney Poquette has been teaching about spending and saving for almost two decades, but this was only the second year that she’d invited notable guests to hear about what students had learned.
“Honestly, I just want people to see the value of personal finance education,” Poquette said. She’s been advocating for years — unsuccessfully so far — to make the class a statewide graduation requirement; it already is in 28 other states and 13 high schools in Vermont, including Winooski.
“This class is just really, really practical to your lives,” Vermont Treasurer Mike Pieciak told the teens. He said he especially appreciated the way it teaches students that there are many different pathways to financial success.
The student presentations backed up Pieciak’s assertion. Sophomore Jafari Munyugu flipped through a slideshow he’d created detailing his aspiration to become an aerospace engineer, his anticipated monthly salary and how he’d budget his money. Through a class survey, Munyugu said, he’d discovered his risk tolerance was moderate, so he’d likely invest in a combination of stocks and bonds.
Junior Mikey Schmoll, meanwhile, planned to become an HVAC service technician. Though the starting salary wasn’t very high, he said, it had the potential to increase over time. Another upside: The company he hoped to work for had a 401k match.
Before taking Poquette’s class, Schmoll said afterward, “I didn’t know anything about credit or overdraft fees. That’s something that I probably would have had problems with.”
Thanks to a lesson on financial fraud, Munyugu was recently able to help his father avoid getting duped by an online offer that seemed too good to be true.
Without the class, Munyugu said, “who knows what could have happened?”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Money Talks”
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2025.
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