As this school year winds down, we're looking ahead already to the next one.

Incoming high school freshmen, the class of 2029 and those who would come after them must now take a financial literacy course to graduate.

The Kentucky General Assembly passed House Bill 342 in March.

Our Laura Rogers explains why champions of the bill say learning about managing money should be an educational matter.

More about that and our Education Matters report here at Warren East High School in Bowling Green.

Miranda Phillips is teaching a course on financial literacy.

Our goal is for every student to be successful when they leave high school.

Part of that is making a salary or living wage, knowing how to save and spend responsibly.

Students need to understand how to manage that money once they get it, so that they don't spend it frivolously or end up not being able to pay bills that were like 4% of Kentucky students that were guaranteed to have a full course requirement now.

And Warren East was one of the high schools on that list.

Republican state Representative Michael Meredith represents part of Warren and all of Edmondson counties, and sponsored House Bill 342, which requires all high school students to pass a financial literacy course.

And in order to graduate where you would spend your money.

It's budgeting.

It's taking out loans, it's insurance, it's debits and credits.

And hopefully they'll get a little bit of investment experience in that as well.

Meredith, whose career is in banking, says teenagers nearing adulthood need to understand these concepts before entering college or the workforce.

You're starting to make some of those big decisions.

It's a lot easier to start with a good foundation than to wreck a good foundation and come back and try to fix it after the fact.

My name is Patrick Dr. Bovey.

I'm 16.

He had an important ally.

16 year old Patrick Grove, a student at North Oldham High School.

Patrick had interned at the Treasury during the summer and this just became his passion.

Personal finance is something that everyone needs.

Speaker David Osborne, connected to Meredith and the two worked together to develop the legislation.

He was a wealth of knowledge.

He had done his homework committee hearings.

I was constantly on the phone with legislators, sending emails, doing anything just to make sure that this bill would make it out of committee onto the floor.

If you put your mind to something, you can do it.

Gribble knows the importance of perseverance.

He is the son of Ukrainian refugees who came to the United States in 1996.

You didn't have the language.

You didn't have money.

You had the American dream.

Though he says that American Dream is based on the principle of education.

But he felt schools needed to do more to teach life skills, including financial literacy.

I got to meet so many kids that they simply didn't have the personal finance skills that they needed.

He hopes that will soon change with the passage of this legislation.

Over half a million kids in the next ten years will graduate with the personal finance education, which in my opinion is it's incredible.

As for implementing the course in the classroom, which will take the place of an elective, there are resources available as well as community partners.

There are several national nonprofit groups who provide free curriculum to schools across the nation.

We have had some financial institutions reach out, willing to partner with us to create curriculum for these courses, all with the goal of teaching teens how to spend and save wisely.

For Kentucky edition, you're saving.

I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you so much, Laura.

Kentucky is now the 27th state to require a financial literacy credit for graduation.