Kennedy now offers “Life After High School” seminars once a month during SMART lunch. These seminars are aimed for juniors and seniors who want to plan for the future, although it is offered to freshmen and sophomores as well. The seminars are held in the black box during A tutorials once a month, and are led by  Phil Ferrante and Dennis Hynek.

“It all started with my son who is now in college and I realized how crazy student loans are getting and so I wanted to let kids know what is coming down the road for them pretty soon,” Hynek said.

Ferrante is a teacher at Kennedy who will be teaching financial literacy and money management next trimester, both of which are beneficial classes for students and their futures. He wanted to give students a heads up as to what they need to prepare for.

“I kind of looked at it is as a game plan for what happens after you get your diploma; whether you still live in town, you’re living at home, you move onto college,” Said Ferrante. “It’s just kind of a game plan as to what you’re going to expect and how you can prepare yourself.”

By going to these seminars, students are learning skills that are beneficial to them in their lives after high school. They learn about things such as understanding what debt is and how to avoid it, the risks and rewards of credit cards, how banks work, how to save money, budgeting, insurance, taxes, and much more. 

The first seminar took place on December 16 and talked about debt and students loans. “The whole point is to kind of eliminate debt and issues related with it because it can affect relationships, it can affect family, your job, schooling, it can affect all of that,” Ferrante said.