January 19, 2004

A highlight of AmeriTowne's morning opening ceremony is the swearing in of the mayor and judge at Towne Hall, with coverage by the Television Station.

On a bleak Monday morning in December, a vicious wind is whipping snow over the frozen ground outside the windows of Alicia Sanchez Elementary School in Lafayette, Colorado. Inside, students are whipping through their final preparations in the cheery light and warmth of two connected classrooms.

“If you are an accountant, meet me at this table over here,” announces 5th-grade teacher Bev Sanders as scurrying students swirl around her. “Newspaper! Who’s newspaper?” she calls, waving yellow task folders in the air. “UPS! Where are you? Bank! College! Medical Center!

Young AmeriTowne's Town Hall

Students come forward to take the folders, huddle in groups at pushed-together desks, pass in and out of the door between Sanders’ classroom and the other 5th-grade class led by teacher Grant Swift. After more than a month of work, they’re almost ready for the culminating event: a day spent in a working model of a city known as Young AmeriTowne.

The students will function as managers, employees and public officials in 17 different businesses and municipal offices. By managing business and personal finances, performing their jobs and shopping at other businesses, students learn about their roles as both producers and consumers.

On a break from work to go shopping with their Young AmeriTowne dollars, Rachel Kopnisky and Sulema Siordia meet with teacher Grant Swift.

More Than a Field Trip
They will arrive at Young AmeriTowne primed by an elaborate curriculum of 42 lessons covering basic economics, banking, money management, government, communications and business preparation. Much of the learning is experience-based: For the positions of judge and mayor, for example, students run campaigns, from developing themes and slogans and posters to conducting the final elections. Games like “Banking Bingo” teach the principles and paperwork of deposits, withdrawls and checking and interest-bearing savings accounts.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to experiencing how our economic system works, putting theory into action, understanding why it’s important to have a good math background for future financial habits,” says Debbie Pierce, spokeswoman for the Young Americans Center for Financial Education in Denver. “It’s understanding how important teamwork is, helping children to understand that they’re valuable members of society and understand the responsibility of having and holding a job.”

An Entrepreneur’s Vision
The Center was developed by Denver cable television pioneer Bill Daniels. Now a part of Denver lore is the story of how Daniels read a newspaper article on a 5th-grade class that wanted to develop an entrepreneurial venture but was unable to get financing. That 1984 article got him thinking about the importance of educating young people in economics and free enterprise.

Daniels launched an effort to provide such education by financing and creating the Young Americans Bank, the world’s only bank just for people 21 and younger. The application for the bank was approved in 1987 by the State of Colorado and the FDIC. More than 2,000 accounts were opened in the first three weeks.

In 1988, Daniels established the not-for-profit Young Americans Education Foundation to foster educational programs that complemented the mission of the bank. In 1989, Daniels & Associates endowed the foundation with $250,000, and the foundation contracted with the Learning Exchange in Kansas City to create a program called Exchange City. The first Exchange City sessions were held at the University of Denver in the summers of 1989 and 1990. A year later, Exchange City became the year-round program now known as Young AmeriTowne and moved into its own building.

Bill Daniels passed away in March 2000, but his legacy lives on. In October 2000, the Young Americans Center for Financial Education moved into a new 38,000-square-foot building in Denver housing Young AmeriTowne; the Young Americans Bank; International Towne, which teaches international economics concepts to kids ages 12-14; and other programs. Those programs are supported by a long list of charitable contributors ranging from major corporations to private individuals and foundations.

Main Street
For Denver kids, Young AmeriTowne is the big attraction. Little sisters and brothers know about it and look forward to it for years before they reach 5th grade, because they’ve heard about it from their older siblings. Some 13,500 students from 160 schools operate Young AmeriTowne each year. Nearly every weekday, Young AmeriTowne swarms with students.

On this particular Wednesday in December 2003, Young AmeriTowne hosts 90 kids from Alicia Sanchez Elementary School and another Lafayette, Colorado, school, Escuela Bilingue Pioneer.

The kids unload from the buses, clamber up the stairs and pour into the Towne Square in a babbling torrent just after 10 a.m. As Young AmeriTowne staffer Jennifer Turkaly gives her introductory speech, they seat themselves on the green “lawn” of carpet and pay quiet attention.

At the Medical Center, College President Desiree Bencomo (in chair) is treated by staff, including (left to right) Rachel Kopnisky, Medical Center manager; Sulema Siordia, health tech; Yolanda Ybarra, doctor; and Vanessa Garcia, doctor.

Each student has a specific job, won through an application process completed in the weeks leading up to this day. Some are managers, others accountants, still others hold jobs such as designer/sales person or a graphic artist in the Sign & Print Shop; a teller or computer operator/file clerk in the bank.

“We always have kids asking for specific jobs, but not one kid ever comes back saying they hated the job they had,” says Saunders. “From bank teller to UPS worker to DJ at the radio station, everybody loves their jobs.”

Open for Business
At 10:35 a.m., Turkaly releases the Young AmeriTowners to their businesses with 25 minutes to get ready. At 11:00 a.m., everybody gathers in the Square again for the opening ceremonies, where the judges and mayors (two of them today, since two schools are attending together) are sworn in and then interviewed by the student radio and TV teams covering the event. AmeriTowne comes alive.

Over at the bank, the tellers sit idly waiting for customers, then suddenly find themselves with long lines as the first group of Towners on work break comes in to cash their paychecks.

One of the laws established by the kids is that each citizen must give a Young AmeriTowne dollar to a homeless person. Sergio Tamayo, accountant for the Technical Services Shop, does his duty by "homeless" teacher Bev Sanders (seated by student teacher Lesley Johnson).

“Yessir, what can I do for you?” Snack Shop manager Colton Gonzales asks one of the customers lined up at his counter. “How can I help you?” he says to the next one. “Have a nice day!” he says to each departing customer—as required by one of the laws students passed for their day in Young AmeriTowne.

Over in the Medical Center, Desiree Bencomo, president of the college, is being treated for “itchy dry skin,” having her temperature taken and her pulse and oxygen measured by the pulse oximeter. Supervising the activities is the manager, Rachel Kopnisky.

“I wanted to be in the medical center because I wanted to be able to do that when I grow up, because my grandmother is a doctor,” Rachel says. “It’s interesting to be kids and have our own job for a day.”

Rachel and health technician Sulema Siordia head out with a wheelchair in search of the medical center’s next customer. “No,” Sulema is whispering to Rachel as they approach their target. “Yes,” Rachel says, “You got to pick the last one.”

Parcel service carrier/salesman Anthony Juarez, wearing a brown UPS uniform, is innocently sorting business-to-business checks on a UPS cart when they come up behind him. He turns around when he hears a girl’s voice telling him to get his checkbook and come along.

“What?” he says. “I don’t need to go to the hospital!”

“You have chest pain,” Sulema says. “Get in the chair!”

“No,” Anthony says with a challenging grin. “I don’t have chest pain.”

“Maybe a broken leg would be better,” Rachel suggests. “Should we give him a broken leg?”

They wheel Anthony through shoppers in the bustling Towne Square and along the sidewalks. They pass police officer Gerardo Rubio making an arrest. The offender has failed to say “Whazzup!” to a police officer, another of the laws the kids voted to establish, and is headed for Towne Hall to pay a fine.

A Popular Program
“Pretending to be a grownup for a day is fun for them,” says Bev Sanders. “I’ve been going there for six years now, and my first group of kids, now juniors in high school, still come back and ask about it.”

Many Denver-area teachers are unable to get their classes into Young AmeriTowne. Those schools already enrolled in the program have priority for return, and most choose to come back again and again. Only one or two schools drop out each year.

“For at least the last five years, new schools have had to put their names on a waiting list of more than 70 schools,” says Debbie Pierce. “Almost since the beginning, we haven’t marketed Young AmeriTowne to the schools, because there’s no place to put them.”

This winter, however, YAEF Programs Inc. is breaking ground on a second Young AmeriTowne facility in the Denver suburb of Lakewood. When it opens, an event anticipated for late 2004, it will double the number of kids who become Young AmeriTowne citizens to more than 27,000 per year.

For More Information:

• The Young AmeriTowne Web site
• The Young American Center for Financial Education
• The Jump$tart Coalition for Financial Literacy
• More Internet resources on financial education for kids can be found on the jumpstart Web site

Talk Back

If you’ve got comments or questions about this story, we’d like to hear them. Send your response to Susan Phillips (susan@connectforkids.org).

Robert Ebisch is a freelance writer living in Golden, Colorado.