Getting invested: how Gifted Savings has impacted Cedar

When he has spare time, math teacher Roquez Walker discusses real estate and stocks with some of his older students one-on-one. With the introduction of Gifted Savings, a program giving every Clarke County School District senior a $1,000 investment portfolio, students are now receiving more formalized education.

“With seniors, we’ll either talk about real estate or stocks to put that in their mind,” Walker said. “I want them to take that money seriously once they are able to acquire it, to let it compound interest, do the work, because time is a really big boost for them.”

In 2023, Gifted Savings piloted with a group of adults in Yellow Springs, Ohio. One of the main pieces of feedback the program received was that participants wished they were introduced to investing earlier in life. The organization decided to shift their focus to high school. They aren’t just giving students investments; rather the program wants to see how students learn. 

“A few of the things that we’re hoping to learn over the course of this year and moving forward, is when you give young people a real investment portfolio and the weekly lessons to learn about the essentials of saving and investing, how does it change them and their habits as investors?” Gifted Savings Executive Director Josh Landay said.

Using this data, the program wants to improve its lessons as much as possible before more widespread implementation, which Landay hopes will be across the country. Currently, a research team at the University of Georgia’s college of Family and Consumer Sciences is developing a plan to monitor the program in CCSD. Landay says this kind of research will be the first of its kind.

“There’s not enough knowledge or research out there about what happens when you teach young people about real world investing. If we can demonstrate a positive difference, this can have a positive impact in the lives of young people, their families and their community at large. It starts a new conversation nationwide,” Landay said.

One of the goals of this research is to look past only how it affects students and to investigate how it impacts the entire community.

“The researchers also want to see how Gifted Savings can benefit the families of those students. Is it spurring conversations around the dinner table at night? Are parents and brothers and sisters also learning about investing and fostering a sense of greater financial future for them simply because their student is bringing it home at the end of the day?” Landay said.

CCSD Social Studies Coordinator Ben Smalley, the school district’s coordinator for the program, believes that current personal finance education sometimes falls flat. This is because students don’t see the concepts they are learning as they happen in reality. He hopes that this program can reinvent financial education entirely.

“Sometimes when students learn about financial literacy, they think it’s not about them, whether they come from a family that doesn’t have that much money, or even if they do, if they think they’re too young. Hopefully this will get them to consider, ‘I’ve got a little bit of money in an investment portfolio, and I’m learning how to think about what my long term life could look like if I make good decisions about money,’” Smalley said.

However, Gifted Savings must raise more money to continue to offer this education. The money required to fund Gifted Savings for the class of 2026 has been provided by an anonymous donor. That same person has also given half of the money for the class of 2027. 

“We’re already raising money from the community to fund the other half of those student portfolios for next year. We’re already working with the Chamber of Commerce, the Athens Area Community Foundation and with a lot of business leaders throughout the city who are interested in helping us to fuel this moving forward,” Landay said.

To raise more awareness of the program, Gifted Savings has partnered with TED-Ed. On Sept. 9, the TED Blog YouTube channel posted a video which explains the program and expresses a need for donations. There will also be a TEDx event in the spring where students can speak publicly about any topic. It is scheduled for Sunday, May 3 at 1055 Barber Street.

“It is our hope that at least a few students and or teachers will choose Gifted Savings as a meaningful experience to them this year and that they hope to share that out at the TEDx event next spring,” Landay said.

TED-Ed has played a crucial role in bringing Gifted Savings to CCSD. TED-Ed founder and executive director Logan Smalley, who is Ben Smalley’s brother, had an opportunity to speak with the Gifted Savings team and suggested CCSD as its first district-wide pilot.

“We’re not too big, not too small. We’ve got a lot of connections,” Ben Smalley said. “There are a lot of discussions about intergenerational poverty. Not to say that this is going to end that, because it’s going to take a lot more than just the program, but at least maybe chipping away at that and helping students break some cycles.”

One of the major issues that the program has faced is trying to make sure all students are signed up.

“What we’ve run into recently is setting up a system to efficiently get everybody signed up and do all the things that they need to do. That’s one that’s already popped up just thinking about how we can do that better next year,” Smalley said.

English teacher Hannah Doolittle, who teaches a senior advisement class, hopes that Gifted Savings can provide students with a deeper understanding of finance than regular economics classes provide.

“I teared up when I learned about it, because I’ve been at this school for seven years, and I don’t know that we are preparing you to be financially literate the way that I hope,” Doolittle said. “$1,000 is not a whole lot of money when you become an adult, but it is a good stepping stone to help people transition, and to teach students financial responsibility.”

Walker, who also teaches senior advisement, thinks that introducing this material can provide useful information to teachers as well as students.

“I think if a teacher isn’t too great with their financial literacy, the Gifted Savings program does give them an opportunity to look at the videos themselves, to get up to speed or learn something new for themselves. So a lot of times, students are able to ask questions about it. The teacher does have access to look at the stuff ahead of time and it’s good to help students navigate the modules or answer any questions they may have,” Walker said.

According to Doolittle, it’s easy for teachers to navigate the website and to monitor student progress.

“One thing I like about the program is that I have my own login and it emails me an update once a week, and will show me all the kids in my advisement and how much progress they’ve made on a particular lesson. I like that because it’s less steps for me. I don’t have to go into the website and find names and see how everyone is doing individually,” Doolittle said.

Senior Forrester Williams also thinks the program is easy to use because of its self-paced nature and review at the end of each module.

“Being able to go at my own pace, I’ve been able to easily understand it, instead of it being one lesson a day and more restrictive. Having us write a summary has helped me understand it, because I’ve been able to put it into my own words instead of their’s,” Williams said.

According to Smalley, the program’s self-paced modules allow students who can’t attend advisement to learn the same material.

“One thing that the Gifted Savings team thought about when they made this was, worst case scenario, a student will have to do this totally alone. So the learning is designed where a student who won’t be checking in with an advisor can actually go through each learning module, just like you would on an online course, and be able to learn,” Smalley said.

Williams says he was originally concerned about whether the value of the portfolio would rise or not.

“At the beginning, I was very worried that it was just going down, because every morning it would go down, but there is a very slow rise in it at the end of the day. I’m satisfied with that, because me and my friends looked at it, and in about 10 years, it should go up,” Williams said.

Landay believes that students are justified to have questions or concerns about the program.

“A healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing. We want students to be cautious, cheerful and judicious about how they use their money and how they plan their finances. That being said we can provide the reassurance that, first, we are a nonprofit organization, a for-benefit organization, everything that we do is for the good of the people we serve. We don’t generate profit,” Landay said.

He also hopes that the program can provide connection among the senior class.

“What I hope that seniors in CCSD get out of this is a sense of community, that they’re changing the tone for the future, that this will be the first generation of investors in Athens, Georgia, and I hope that it sparks conversations amongst the senior class,” Landay said.