After a recent presentation to seniors on financial literacy, Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) rewarded students with a short quiz on the knowledge they acquired through the presentation. Each group of seniors created fun names for their teams and did their best to answer correctly so they would be rewarded with candy.

Lots of laughs filled the auditeria as seniors enjoyed competing against each other for candy. Some seniors even gave ridiculous answers causing smiles to break out on everyone’s faces. Overall, most of the people in the room seemed to enjoy what was going on.

On Oct. 18, the auditeria was packed as the seniors arrived with confusion on their faces, wondering what the assembly was about. Smiles broke out on their faces when they saw the bowls of candy, and they were amused when they spotted a man in a funny hat with an American flag design.

As the assembly began, Principal Doug Dall took the microphone and gave a short speech about the state of the economy, the hardships of getting into college, and how Clark students are lucky to be visited by Gatto. Then Gatto took the microphone and talked about how impressed he was in what he saw during the tour he took at Clark. He also showed a huge check made out to Clark for $2500 to be used for school resources, donated by the company Cash, Credit, and College.

The event was planned after Gatto and the people who work with him called the school and asked if they could meet with some of the seniors in order to help them understand the importance of knowing their limits in finances.

Matt Denny, a CPA with Denny and Company in Valencia, showed a short video and gave a presentation on the importance of finance literacy. He gave advice on dealing with finances as seniors who are getting ready to head out to college and start experiencing the life of an adult.

Senior Christopher Kramer filmed the entire meeting for cinematography. “Mr. Gatto was very energetic and the students interacted with him,” Kramer said.

As the quiz was coming to a close, the competition started heating up as one table was in the lead but another table followed closely by one point behind. The winners of the table ended up receiving blue plastic piggy banks.

One of the winners, Ama Omar, said, “I thought he was gonna cover a lot of colleges, finances. I wanted to see more specifics on paying for college and other uses for finance. The general living and financing was really interesting.” She believed that the presentation would be helpful to all the seniors and explained subjects that could be foreign to some students.

At the end of the assembly, Gatto commented, “If I had it my way, all schools in the United States would have financial literacy as part of their curriculum in hopes of educating seniors as they head off to college.” He then talked about how seniors should have the knowledge of what they should do with their finances as they start living on their own.