Lesley Cook and Liz Warner, Communities in Schools coordinators at Pendleton County Middle/High School, collaborated with the West Virginia State Treasurer’s office to host a “Get-a-Life” program on Feb. 18 for eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students at the school.
The program is a hands-on financial education experience to engage students with realistic family budget scenarios. Students are given a card with a job title, family size and monthly income. The students will purchase a car, house, insurance, groceries, furniture, gas and other items to see how well they can budget their finances. A “green reaper” also issues “accident” cards which are unplanned expenses. The intent of the exercise is to provide a real-life activity to assist students with understanding living expenditures and to ponder their future and the importance of education.
Assisting with the exercise were community members Jessica Basagic and Teresa Heavner from Pendleton Community Bank; Brianna Bruns and Larry Smith from Summit Bank; Laura Brown from the Pendleton County Economic and Community Development Authority; Justin Bowers from Bowers Auto Sales; Jim Brown from State Farm; Elizabeth Scott from the Town of Franklin; Shelby Layton from T&K Markets; Ciara Lambert from the Pendleton County Chamber of Commerce and Pendleton County Visitors Bureau; Sonny O’Neil from the Pendleton County Board of Education; David Basagic from Basagic Funeral Home; Katie Harmon from the WV Treasurer’s Office; and Steven Barnett and Ali Judy from PCM/HS.