Some of the class is being designed to fit the math curriculum. It's taken so long to get the class somewhat due to having to get the district to accept that I can add higher level math and not simply be a "consumer math" class that is balancing a checkbook as a senior. YES it is an extremely useful skill but the math would not be high level enough on that for a senior 4th year math class.
For those of us who took university-level calculus during junior year and no math at all senior year... could you explain what is regarded as "4th year senior-level math"? Because my brain was going "huh? But how could you even work calculus into a finance class? This doesn't make sense at all as senior math!" until I realized that there are some people who don't reach algebra until college (like my mom).
This is more of a pathway for students not going into a STEM field. The district/state requires 4 credits in math. 1 of those must be taken during senior year. This class would be the equivalent of after Alg II or after Integrated III depending on when you went to school. basically there are GLE's (grade level expectations) we have to meet to cover the common core for each grade.
This class would not be moving into Calc. The class is more designed to give the students another option that they would be interested in. I am walking a tightrope of making it available and attainable for students of all abilities; while also pushing the students enough to be valuable as a math class beyond the Alg II level.
Hopefully that makes sense.
quick list of math involved would be:
Exponential functions (growth, depreciation)
Expected value and probability
Function operations, step functions, Compositions of functions, multi variable functions
linear programing
Modeling with linear, exponential, and other functions
much of the class will be logical thinking in finance using mathematics to back up your reasoning.