Riverside Teens Are Getting Real Education In Business

Sounding like a teacher twice her age, 17 year-old Sadie Heilman tries to coax from Riverside Middle School sixth-grader Kim Voshall the words, “cost of goods sold.”

“COGS cost of, cost of,” said Voshall, bumping her head with the heel of her hand. “It’s where you … see how much money you make.”

The lessons are sinking in for Voshall and her peers because Heilman, a junior at Riverside High School, is helping the younger students put the words to use.

Under Heilman’s tutelage, students in Janelle Campesino’s class at Riverside Middle School have started a candy stand at the middle school. For the students, words like balance sheets, profit margins and target audience now mean the difference between getting back the $3 they have donated as an initial investment and losing it.

One key to a successful business, they have learned, is marketing. The 11- and 12-year-olds quickly settled on beef jerky as a hot item.

“We don’t have jerky in schools, so they want that,” said Voshall. “We raised the price.”

Heilman has been spending three hours a week in Campesino’s class, relating the knowledge she has learned in a Riverside vocational program called REAL Rural Entrepreneurs through Action Learning.

The 7-year-old program requires students to develop business plans and apply for special loans, then own and operate their own business.

Heilman ran an espresso stand at the high school last year but decided this fall to try a different approach. Rather than invest her time into the stand and then leave it behind when she goes to college, Heilman decided to teach valuable lessons to middle school students.

“I think (the candy stand) developed in them that they want to do a lot of that stuff,” said Heilman. “A majority are really interested, and that’s getting them ready for high school.”

Blending macroeconomic principals she learned in Junior Achievement with the practical skills of REAL, she has spent at least two hours a week with Campesino’s students.

“This is just the icing on the cake for these kids,” Campesino said. “It’s something special.”

REAL is a national program designed to take the lessons of Junior Achievement into the marketplace. Riverside’s program, according to coordinator Cory Neville, has the most student business starts of any in the country.

Since the district started it, other rural schools have taken note. The state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction paid Riverside to make an instructional video for other districts.

Riverside’s REAL program has helped students succeed in the real world of business. Neville points to 1994 Riverside graduate Spencer Hall, 20, who owns Expertise Computers in Deer Park, a computer sales and repair company he founded as a REAL student.

Spencer’s brother Josh, a Riverside senior, is in the process of organizing a Hoopfest-like basketball contest to be held at Mead High School in January.

Two other students are starting a mail-order crafts business. Progress is slow, Neville said, because credit-card companies are reluctant to give authorization to high school students.

“I have not seen a school curriculum as exciting as this in 22 years” of teaching, Neville said.

Neville helps students develop detailed business plans and, if investment capital is required, students present loan proposals to a regional board that oversees a $10,000 fund.

No student has defaulted on a loan, Neville said.

Lori Jo Knoles, a small business banking officer at Washington Trust Bank, sits on the board and says some of the student loan applications are more thorough than applications she sees at work.

Heilman seems a success story in the making. Since taking her first REAL class as a sophomore, she has earned a perfect 4.0 grade-point average and sees herself owning a business after college.

Heilman says the program gives relevance to most other classes.

“I knew I needed my English class, but REAL made it make more sense because you have to write” as a businesswoman, she said.

Her family is not wealthy, so Heilman said she is “more motivated to get out and get an education farther than high school,” she said. “I’ll go nuts if I stay in Elk all my life.”

Her plans?

“I am going to be something; I just don’t know what yet.”

, DataTimes