North Reading Public Schools Awarded $14,400 State DESE Grant

House Minority Leader Bradley H. Jones, Jr. (R-North Reading) and Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester) are pleased to announce that the North Reading Public Schools have been approved for a $14,400 Financial Literacy Planning and Implementation Grant through the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

Awarded through a competitive application process, the grants provide state funding to assist school districts with the selection and development of “materials, curriculum, professional development and in-person or virtual experiential learning related to financial literacy.” According to DESE, North Reading’s grant will be used for the “development of lessons and expansion of professional learning aligned to personal financial literacy topics.”

“Providing students with a solid foundation in the basic principles of personal finance, including an understanding of how interest accrues and how to manage debt, will help prepare them for achieving important goals such as buying a home and saving for college or retirement,” said Representative Jones. “This funding will assist our local public schools’ ongoing efforts to teach students about the importance of financial literacy, and I join with Senator Tarr in congratulating North Reading for filing a successful grant application.”

“Integrating financial topics such as saving, learning how to create household budgets, investing, and banking into the school curricula has been a legislative priority for me and I am glad that these concepts are codified in law and supported with these funds,” said Senator Tarr. “The students and their families in North Reading will receive a great deal of value from this grant - knowledge which can yield benefits for years to come.”

In 2019, the House and Senate enacted legislation to promote financial literacy standards for Massachusetts schools. Under the law, DESE is required to provide resources to school districts, charter schools, approved private day or residential schools, and collaborative schools, which can incorporate these standards into their existing mathematics, history and social sciences, technology or business curriculum.