On the outskirts of Hawthorne, California is a small, two-story high school. The school is named Executive Preparatory Academy of Finance or Executive Prep; it is a charter school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Students who attend wear a uniform including a green cardigan with white trim. On the doors to the classrooms are room number signs that resemble a United States Dollar, green with a serial number. On the placard it says: “In Executive Prep We Trust.”
Omar McGee, the founder of Executive Prep, said teachers incorporate topics in financial literacy into subjects students need to graduate.
“Our approach is that we integrate everything through our A-G requirements and our common core,” said McGee. “To integrate financial literacy, we teach them how it’s gonna benefit them,”
By the 10th grade, students learn about credit and budgeting according to Isaiah Paysinger, sophomore at Executive Prep.
“We went over what financial literacy was,” said Paysinger. “We [learned] how to fill out a deposit slip, different things we really need to know when we go to banks and deposit money.”
What motivated McGee to create Executive Prep was to keep adolescence away from debt, especially student loan debt. Americans reached a combined total of $1 trillion in student loan debt in 2013; the amount of continues to accumulate, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“You’re worse than a person that didn’t go to college because you’re so in debt, they’re actually ahead of you,” said McGee.
McGee invested his own money to start the process of creating the school. Screening teachers is an important factor to Executive Prep. Teachers must motivate theory and debate in classroom
“We want teachers to be so effective and impactful for the children,” said McGee. “We put them in classroom with real students and see how they manage the students,”
Teachers work with students in small groups. Staff and faculty members hold students accountable to their work and check with them, according to Cherish Malone, a 10th grader at Executive Prep.
“They just have genuine love for you, like they care about what you’re doing,” she said.
Executive Prep aspires to adopt a paperless education. The high school gives students laptops for them to work on assignment and communicate to teachers throughout the school year. McGee said infusing technology with the curriculum would appeal to teens.
“This is the first time in American history where the kids are smarter than we are because of technology,” said McGee. “Once we accept that and understand that they’re smarter than we are, then that’s when the improvement starts and that’s how we can start saving our children and educating them the right way.”
Sophomore Paysinger said having laptops provides more opportunities to students.
“It enables students here at Executive Prep to go further in-depth with the learning,” Paysinger said. “You can pull information from other avenues whereas with a book, you just have the book as your only resource.”
Advisors also visit the campus and mentor the students during Business in a Box, a campus-wide start-up competition among the students.
“They told us every single thing you need to have a legitimate business,” said Isaiah Tate, a 10th grade student at Executive Prep. “You need to have marketing, you need to know where your money is going, you need to know all these things So your idea works out in the end.”
The Academy of Finance has gotten attention from the community and the media. McGee said “the product speaks for itself” when it comes to advertising.
“In communities like this, having a good school that cares is rare,” he said. “We’re showing [students] things that they never seen before.”