Two new classes are joining West Albany High School’s catalog next year: Personal Financial Education and Career Exploration. Due to a recent senate bill, titled “Senate Bill 3”, these two classes have been set as required for graduation as of 2026 at WAHS.
“I think it will be beneficial for students to start looking down the road a little bit more to what their career is going to require them to have, from a skill set standpoint,” said video productions teacher Matt Boase. “[Career Exploration] is supposed to be a class where you work on skills that you’ll need for your career after you’re done with schooling. Whether that includes college or not is kind of moot for that class.”
Boase explains that Career Exploration is essentially a class to learn skills for life and decisions after high school. This class will be required to be taken by sophomores for one semester.
“I think about myself in high school, and looking past high school, I didn’t do a good job of looking forward when I was going out of high school to college,” Boase said, “so I kind of just thought about, what could I major in that I’m naturally good at.
Boase ended up majoring in journalism, but later decided to switch from journalism to teaching. He says the change made sense at the time, but he did not consider all the possible options available.
“I lucked out, because I really like a bunch of stuff about teaching, but I thought, what if I didn’t luck out and I picked the wrong career?” Boase said. “That would have stunk moving forward to be buried in the wrong job.”
Personal Financial Education is the second new class being added and required to take next year.
“It’s a class that [students] can apply to the real world right away, [while] they’re in high school,” finance teacher Joey Running said.
The class will be required for seniors next year for a semester credit and will teach students how to handle money and live as an adult after high school. As Running puts it, it’s an adulting class, teaching the basics of handling money, paying taxes, and other finance topics.
“If you know about investing sooner rather than later, that is your superpower because of [the way that] compounding interest works,” Running said. “Start early so that your future self will thank you later.”
