Published August 2003

Proposed JA center
would be boon for kids

In late June, a ground-breaking ceremony in Auburn foreshadowed an equally significant event anticipated soon in Snohomish County — the building of an Experience JA facility that will help tens of thousands of King and Pierce County students learn about America’s free-enterprise system and find their place in it.

The facility to be built there is the first of two planned by Junior Achievement of Greater Puget Sound, with the second one still seeking donated land for a site in Snohomish County.

As soon as suitable land is found, this county, too, will build its own JA center for educating students about jobs, business and finances. But the Snohomish County site could be much more, too. Plans currently call for including space in the project to house the offices of Junior Achievement of Greater Puget Sound, now headquartered in downtown Seattle.

Siting the Experience JA center here would be a triumph for the county, but we’re not the only possible location. If land is found in north King County first, we could lose this opportunity. Having the facility built here, along with the regional JA headquarters, would mean more than prestige, it would mean easier accessibility to JA programs and facilities for thousands of Snohomish County students.

Those who are familiar with Junior Achievement — founded nationally in 1919 and in Puget Sound in 1953 — know that it bridges our education system and our business community.

Volunteers teach K-12 programs in scores of Snohomish County schools, from Archbishop Murphy, Arlington, Lynnwood and Kamiak high schools to Challenger, Mill Creek, Mountlake Terrace and Stanwood elementary schools.

JA classes introduce students to the world of business and economics, showing them how they can prepare for their own roles in that world in terms of jobs, training, careers and contributing to their communities.

In the Puget Sound region, the nonprofit JA program reaches more than 95,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade students each year. More than 2,465 teachers in 63 school districts and private schools integrate Junior Achievement programs into their classrooms through 3,300 community volunteers from the business community. Financial support comes from nearly 2,500 businesses and individuals as well as special fund-raising events.

The Experience JA program includes the JA Enterprise Village for fifth-graders and JA Finance Park for eighth-graders. Those new programs have already been proven highly successful in Florida, and sites are being developed across the country.

Enterprise Village is a mini-city with as many as 20 public and private enterprises — from a newspaper and bank to a restaurant, print shop and television station — where students can experience roles as employees and consumers, applying lessons they’ve learned in the JA classroom programs.

Finance Park uses a realistic business setting to teach students about creating and maintaining a personal budget, how to buy a house and find health-care providers, or how to find a job, open a checking account, buy a car, invest in stocks or shop in supermarkets. There will be nearly 15 businesses represented in the park.

In a world where the economy, taxes, investments and budgets are all a part of daily living for adults, it’s essential that young people learn about the role payrolls and finances will play in their lives, and the roles they can play in our local, regional, national and global economy.

That’s why Junior Achievement programs are so important for our children and for strengthening the American free-enterprise system by educating future generations of business owners, employees and consumers.

That’s why Snohomish County needs to have an Experience JA center to enhance the programs that are already helping to bring the reality of the business world into the classroom, a center that also will help bring classrooms of students into a mini-city of real-world experiences.

John Wolcott is a member of the Snohomish County Junior Achievement board of directors. For more information about Junior Achievement of Central Puget Sound, visit its Web site at http://seattle.ja.org.

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