The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce is teaming up with Boston Public Schools to offer financial literacy classes to high school students as part of a pilot program that will start in the fall.
Chamber chief executive Jim Rooney announced the program in a recorded speech, delivered to members on Thursday, about the chamber’s business outlook for 2024. Rooney described it as the “first pilot of its type” in the city, with a long-term goal of ensuring every high school graduate in Boston can participate, and that financial literacy gets embedded in the BPS curriculum.
Rooney has been trying to line up business-school partnerships since taking over as chamber chief executive roughly a decade ago, with limited success. In an interview, he said he met with the two previous school superintendents but found that efforts to establish a formal partnership became mired in government bureaucracy.
He had considerably more luck with Mary Skipper, the current BPS superintendent. Skipper and Rooney created a “workforce advisory committee” in September 2023 to develop blueprints for successful school-business partnerships. The concept of financial literacy became a key focus area in those talks. Several high-profile companies participated in the discussions, including Deloitte, Fidelity Investments, Natixis, Citizens Financial, Liberty Mutual, and Columbia Threadneedle
The schools where these elective classes will be offered have not yet been named, Rooney said. He expects chamber members will be involved in the curriculum development, which will cover everything from investing in stocks to balancing a checkbook, and also may volunteer to make guest appearances at the schools. (The elective classes would be taught by a BPS teacher.) The idea of making financial contributions has not been ruled out, Rooney added, though no corporate money has been donated yet.
“We owe it to ourselves to have a high-level, high-performing public school system in Boston,” Rooney said in the interview. “I have a very strong belief that a strategic business community relationship with the local public school system is important. It’s important to the success of the students, and important to getting those students ready to participate in the jobs of the future.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.
