(Photo: The "Bobcat Branch" of the Florida Credit Union)
By Chris Wilson
With the various controversies surrounding Buchholz High, including enrollment in its magnet programs and the overcrowding issue, we thought it might benefit the community to take a look inside of both the Academy of Finance and the Academy of Entrepreneurship. At both academies, you can find students learning “real world” skills and training. 

Academy of Entrepreneurship
The Academy of Entrepreneurship offers several electives for students to take during their four years of high school. Students must apply to and be accepted to the Academy in order to attend. Some of the requirements include a minimum 2.5 grade point average, letters of recommendation from middle school teachers and a demonstration of good behavior during their middle school years.

During freshman year, Academy students receive an overview of starting and opening a business, including details about personal finances and taxes. The tenth grade class is business law and juniors learn the principles of business ownership, including writing a business plan and marketing. During their senior year, students get to run the Academy’s “Spirit Spot,” an on-campus store open to all of the school’s staff and students.

“It’s not a common high school program,” says Academy of Entrepreneurship director Donna Martin. “A lot of schools have classes on marketing or in business. But, not a lot of schools offer a four-year program.” In fact, Buchholz has been chosen as a state model for new entrepreneurship programs and has helped set-up and mentor five new programs around Florida.

Students also enter a variety of state, national and international competitions, which feature case studies to find solutions for company problems, role playing contests, presenting business plans to “loan officers” and presenting creative marketing projects.

This year, the Academy’s freshmen and sophomore classes have been working with the Alachua County Library District to help market the public libraries to teens.

“Almost all of our students in the Academy go on to college and many of them major in a business-related field,”?says Martin. “Several have been really interested in starting their own businesses. They can accomplish a wide variety of things.”

The Spirit Spot itself is a hands-on business that is run by the students. The store features departments, including apparel, the bookstore and the cafe. The bookstore features titles picked out by teachers for outside reading and is a partnership with Barnes & Noble. The apparel department features various Buchholz High gear and the cafe is loaded with inexpensive snacks. Even the cafe’s snacks have to adhere to regulations and standards and the students are responsible to make sure they do. “The students designed the store,”?says Martin. “They place the orders and handle inventory and pricing.”

Buchholz senior Ben Carr is currently the chief financial officer of the Academy of Entrepreneurship. It is his job to help run the Spirit Spot. Carr says he has to keep daily accounting records for the store’s various departments and delegate responsibilities to the other student employees.

“After this whole experience of four years of business classes, I have totally shifted my focus of what I want to do (after graduation),” says Carr. “I am applying to business schools. I feel like I can go into almost any field with business.”

Academy of Finance
The Buchholz High Academy of Finance is another four-year business program that is focused more on the business administration and money management areas. Among the courses taught as part of the Academy are financial and business technology, financial operations, advanced placement macroeconomics, accounting applications and personal financial planning. Students learn about business math, banking and credit, insurance and real estate investments, international trade and stocks and bonds.

“There’s nothing average about the program,” says Academy of Finance director Michelle Brothers. “It’s a very high-quality education and the kids get so much out of it.”

Brothers says the financial planning class is particularly great, because it provides students with knowledge they’ll need in life, such as credit cards, buying a car, home mortgages and even student loans. “All of our students should at least be financially-wise individuals (by the time they graduate),” says Brothers. “Most of them go on to college and a lot go into a finance-related field of study.”

One of the many unique aspects of the Academy of Finance is that the students in the program run Buchholz High’s own branch of the Florida Credit Union. The “Bobcat Branch” has student branch managers and tellers and a number of Buchholz teachers, students and administrators are among its 200 account holders. All four of the branch managers go through an interview process with the Florida Credit Union and spend the summer in a paid training course with Florida Credit Union. “At the beginning of the year, all of the students fill out applications and the managers interview them and decide which positions they’ll get,”?says Brothers. “They do all the training.”

One of the bank’s branch managers is junior David Arreola, who has worked at the branch since his freshman year. “We watch the tellers and help them if they have a problem with something,” says Arreola. “We also are responsible for balancing the vault.”

Students also have gotten work as paid interns for some of the top businesses in the Gainesville area, including Bosshardt Realty, the Florida Farm Bureau and Publix.

The students also are encouraged to compete in Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) competitions. Students also are part of the Buchholz Stock Club, where they start with a “pretend” $100,000 investment and compete to make it grow the most.

“I love (the Academy),”?says Brothers. “It’s such a good program and one I believe in. It takes a lot of really dedicated people and we all work as a team.”

For more information on the Buchholz Academy of Finance or Academy of Entrepreneurship, call the school at 955-6702.