WCPO Channel 9 Coverage: Bond Hill Academy honored by UC Economics Center for Student Enterprise (StEP)

By: Tom McKee

CINCINNATI - When it comes to math class at Bond Hill Academy, Marquez Jones is all business.

“Math is fun,” said the aspiring doctor or lawyer. “It’s creative.”

However, the 14-year-old eighth grader gets just as excited when talking about STEP – the Student Enterprise Program – and the student store he helps run every Friday.

“I keep the books and write the checks,” Jones said. “I keep tally of what is sold.”

Principal Tom Boggs said students earn and bank “Bond Hill Bucks” for things such as citizenship, wearing school uniforms, doing homework and exhibiting good effort in class.

“They’re rewarded for doing a great job here in school and they learn that as future employees they can be rewarded for doing more than is expected,” Boggs said.

Students have a bank account and a deposit sheet and have to keep an account book to show how much money they have and now much they’ve saved.

School supplies, teddy bears, cards and sports gear are among items that can be purchased at the STEP Store.

“They also may see an MP3 player,” Boggs said. “For those students who really want to save for that MP3 player, they can save during the course of the year and actually buy that at the end of the year.”

Bond Hill Academy’s involvement with STEP is a partnership with the University of Cincinnati Economics Center. The goal is to engage students, empower educators and equip decision-makers.

Since STEP’s inception in 1977, over 40,000 teachers in 48 Southwestern Ohio school districts been trained and have reached over one million students.

The UC Economics Center on Wednesday presented Boggs with the Valentine Leadership Award and named the STEP students as High Achievers. The honors came during a luncheon at the Hyatt Regency, Downtown.

“Investments in these young people now are going to lead to a much stronger work force and a much more vibrant economy in this region and throughout our nation,” said Economics Center Director George Vredeveld.

Former E.W. Scripps Chairman Bill Burleigh received the Founders’ Award and in prepared remarks said that educating students is everybody’s business.

“It’s far too vital to our futures, and those of our children and grandchildren, to leave to the professionals and politicians,” Burleigh said. “Much more of a voice and more of a choice should be given to parents, particularly those locked in poverty settings, who are willing to cast their fate in lotteries in order to select the schools they desperately want their children to attend.”

“I have great faith that Mama knows best,” he added. “She needs to be heard. Let her vote with her feet. By that, I mean let her send her child to the school she chooses.”

Burleigh said 90 percent of American students attend public schools, but there’s plenty of room for private, parochial, for-profit or home-school sectors as well.

“No one group, no one system, no one approach offers all the answers,” he continued. “In our classrooms as in our economies, let the entrepreneurial spirit flow.”

According to Burleigh, there’s currently a “stranglehold” on teacher credentialing. He suggested changing the system so early retirees from business, engineering, the sciences or other talented professionals can more easily enter the classroom and give children the benefits of their life experiences.”

Looking ahead, Burleigh, solutions to changing the education landscape for Greater Cincinnati will be forged here at home. He pointed to the Strive Initiative, which already is achieving success in helping youngsters in Cincinnati, Covington and Newport from “cradle to career.”

He added that the recession might actually help student achievement by forcing school districts to do more with less and look for more efficient and effective methods.

“Perhaps it will allow us to surmount the ideological and political barriers that have divided us and to see that all that really counts are our children and our grandchildren,” he said. “After all, we stand responsible for them.”

Those ideals are things that Marquez Jones already senses in STEP.

“It will teach me and the other students to budget,” he said. “If you want the bigger things or the most expensive, you have to buy the littlest stuff or save money to get what you need.”

Boggs put things in a different perspective.

“My vision as a principal is to make sure the students that are being produced are great citizens to make our community better, to help make this city better and to help make our world a better place to be,” he said.

Other honors included the Ohio National Financial Services Award to Traders-In-Training from Cincinnati Country Day School. A trio of students participating in a mock stock investment game turned $100,000 into $121,000.

Sycamore High School’s Greg Cole was named Economics Teacher of the Year and the award for Financial Educator of the Year went to Cindy Donnelly of Mason High School.