Interim Kansas Securities Commissioner Josh Ney along with Governor Sam Brownback awarded three students from Salina South High School, along with their teacher, with iPad minis for their winning video submission in the 2nd Annual Kansas Financial Scholars Program Video Contest. State legislators from the Salina area that were present were Senator Tom Arpke, Representative J.R. Claeys, and Representative Steven Johnson. EverFi representative Chris Noel was also present at the ceremony in the capitol.

The Salina South video titled “Financial Literacy” begins with two high school students wondering about how to manage their money in college. A third student comes to the rescue, giving them sound financial advice about mortgages, identity theft, investing, credit cards and more through a clever rap that gives the students a fresh perspective about how they could handle their financial concerns.

Mrs. Susan Montoy teaches Computer Applications courses at Salina South, and has recently started implementing the EverFi Kansas Financial Scholars Program into her classes. Her students who created the winning video were Logan Meis, Kalpit Patel, and Michael Linton. All three young men are seniors this year and are currently working toward receiving their Financial Scholars Program Certification.

“Our office is pleased to see schools like Salina South High School making financial literacy education a priority in their classrooms. It is a critical skill that we believe can be most effective when taught at a young age,” said Interim Commissioner Ney. “We are planning to use the winning video ‘Financial Literacy’ as an educational tool to help engage more young people in financial education awareness.”

The Kansas Financial Scholars Program is a web-based curriculum which uses the latest in new media technologies and is offered at no charge to all Kansas public and private schools, as well as home school students. The 10-unit course is aligned to the Kansas State Standards and offers co-curricular programming aimed at teaching, assessing and certifying students in a variety of financial topics including credit scores, insurance, credit cards, student loans, mortgages, taxes, stocks, savings, 401k’s and other critical concepts that map to national financial literacy standards.