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DENTON – With an aim towards enhancing financial literacy among Caroline County’s students, as well as promoting career exploration, the Caroline Education Foundation (CEF) is poised to launch its first grant opportunities.
Recently, CEF board members Tolbert Rowe, Dr. Jim Orr and Bob Willey shared with the Caroline Review how they hope to help students become better equipped for success in the real world.
“They used to say it's all about reading, writing and arithmetic,” Orr said. “Well, there are some additional things, including … the finance side of things, because money does matter, and how you take care of it matters.”
Orr, a retired educator at every grade level and an administrator with Caroline County Public Schools for many years, said, “There’s no dissension. There's, no one saying, ‘This is fluff. We really don’t need this.’ We’re all united and see that need.”
Longtime loan officer, vice president of lending for Bay Capital Mortgage Corporation and “Dollars and Sense” columnist with the Caroline Review, Rowe said he’s seen a generation of clients who don’t know the basics of money management.
“Being financially literate is a critical life skill, and we have a responsibility, we feel as a community, to provide as much information and education to our youth as we possibly can,” Rowe said.
A Caroline County native, Rowe recalled how a general business course at Lockerman Middle School made a significant impact on his own life. “It's etched in my brain,” he said. “(It was a) big blue book and a workbook that had fake checks and all kinds of stuff like that.”
“When I got on the school board in 1999, (the course) wasn't even on the radar screen,” he said. “Because at that point you teach what's tested, and that wasn't tested. So, what happened? It died. It completely died from maybe the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. We have a whole generation of kids in that time frame that had no exposure to financial literacy.”
During his tenure on the Caroline County Board of Education, Rowe was influential in helping board members agree to establish a financial literacy course as an elective, and later establishing it as a requirement for graduation roughly eight years ago.
“It wasn’t a hard push,” he said. “Everybody recognizes how important financial literacy is.”
According to the World Economic Forum, “Data from the 2024 index reveals how financial literacy in the US has hovered around 50% for eight consecutive years, with a 2% drop in the past two years.”
According to the National Financial Educators Council, “Youth financial literacy statistics paint a picture of recent graduates struggling to navigate the financial world: drowning in debt, late on payments, losing money on investments. Most of these hardships are due to a lack of education in his or her earlier years.”
As a loan officer, Rowe encountered “kids that were graduating who didn't know how to write a check. I mean, it was just distressing, very distressing.”
Willey, a retired certified public accountant, was chairman of the original CEF, founded in the 1980s. He credited the late Bill Ecker, who served as CCPS superintendent from 1984 to 1991, as igniting the “original spark” for the foundation. A group of local folks formed a corporation and “went like gangbusters for five to seven years,” Willey said.
Before fund-raising fatigue set in, several grants were approved, and progress was made before the foundation “kind of petered out,” Willey said. He maintained the bank account and finally reached out to Rowe about a year ago about reviving the foundation with the existing funds.
Then and now, the focus on financial literacy is important to Willey. “I think kids today are getting out of high school with what I don't think is an adequate understanding of finances and bank accounts and all that stuff,” he said.
Rowe, who has been involved with Junior Achievement, sees the foundation potentially supporting efforts to help students access JA’s offerings at its large new facility in Salisbury.
Although CEF is focused on Caroline County students, it isn’t part of Caroline County Public Schools. Instead, it’s a separate, non-profit foundation committed to collaborating with the school district to support students in the county’s public schools, as well as students enrolled in home schooling and home hospital programs.
“Caroline County is already doing quite a bit in this area. I don't want to give anybody the impression we're bringing in a program that Caroline doesn't already participate in,” Orr said. “We want to enhance things.”
Orr said research indicates a focus on “career choices and opportunities actually impacts student graduation rates and enhances student performance in schools. Career awareness opens up pathways for kids; they understand expectations better.”
“Financial literacy, too, can help students with long term goal setting, reducing stress after graduation, as they go into the work world or college or the military,” he said.
“The financial decisions that kids make going forward in their life can significantly impact their ability to be successful, and the more information that can be provided to kids as part of their learning experience, the better prepared they will be to make prudent decisions,” Rowe said.
“We're not looking for kids to grow up to be economists,” Rowe said. “We want them to grow up and be educated consumers. And as an educated consumer, there are so many things in your life, assets that you aspire to obtain, like a house, but also more critically and more directly is management of credit.”
Being financially literate as a student in a “safer time” of life, provides a solid foundation of knowledge, Orr said. “Knowledge is power, … and in an ever-changing world, they have to be more prepared and have more knowledge than ever.”
Foundation board members hope to encourage at least 1,000 individuals, families, businesses and organizations to give $100 to support the mission. Although they have a long runway, enough funds have been raised to merit creating a grant application form to underwrite eligible projects.
Other CEF trustees include Wayne Cole, Milton Nagel, J.W. Willey and ex officio member Dr. Derek Simmons, CCPS superintendent.
“We're still growing as a foundation, looking for opportunities to spread the word and meeting internally to look for new ideas,” Orr said.
“We just want to be another cog in the wheel, so to speak, that will be able to provide financial support to organizations who need it,” Rowe said.
