Treasurer Pack, Senator Justice Bring Financial Literacy Program to McDowell County Students

State Treasurer Larry Pack and U.S. Senator Jim Justice carried West Virginia's "Get A Life" financial literacy simulation to Southside K-8 School in War on April 1, opening National Financial Literacy Month in a county where 34 percent of residents live below the poverty line and median household income of $31,559 is roughly half the state average.

The visit produced one named outcome: a Get A Life Community Volunteer Award for Sarah Muncy, the Communities in Schools coordinator whom Pack credited with sustaining the program's presence in McDowell County over several years. "I am proud to present this Community Volunteer Award to Sarah Muncy who worked closely with my Office for years to bring our Get a Life program to McDowell County," Pack said. No specific scheduling commitments, funding levels, or data-reporting benchmarks for McDowell schools were announced at the event.

Get A Life hands middle schoolers a card listing a job title, family size, and monthly income tied to a position requiring no post-secondary education, then walks them through a month of mandatory expenses: car, house, insurance, groceries, furniture, gas. Students then repeat the simulation with a higher salary attached to a degree or trade certificate, making the financial difference between the two paths concrete. Statewide, the Treasury reports the program reaches more than 16,000 students annually at more than 140 middle schools. McDowell-specific enrollment figures were not released alongside those totals.

Pack described plans for multiple stops that day, with outreach targeting both students and senior residents across the county. That reach reflects the documented scale of need: only 5.8 percent of McDowell County adults hold a bachelor's degree, and the county's estimated employment rate stands at 28.5 percent, well below state and national averages. McDowell County Schools operated under state takeover from 2001 to 2013, a period that underscores how structural the district's challenges remain.

The simulation is designed precisely to show eighth graders what those tradeoffs look like in a paycheck. Whether it does so consistently across McDowell classrooms is a different question. Muncy's award makes plain that the program's foothold in the county has rested on a single Communities in Schools coordinator working with a state office over years, not a standing district contract or publicly reported delivery schedule. Without those accountability mechanisms, the visit to Southside K-8 marks a kickoff to National Financial Literacy Month, not a commitment to the county's remaining schools.