SKOWHEGAN — Skowhegan Savings Bank will open its 11th branch office soon — in the lobby of Skowhegan Area High School. Students will be able to open a bank account while working toward a new graduation requirement in financial literacy.

Students at the Somerset Career & Technical Center, next to the high school, have cut an opening in the cinder block wall where two tellers stations will be open from noon to 3 p.m. two or three days a week beginning in mid-January. Career center students also will do the construction and electrical work for the bank.

The bank window is between two entrances to the Elizabeth Merrill Auditorium at the high school. A mural that previously filled that space will be moved to just above the bank window, high school Principal Richard Wilson said.

“This an example of what we’re trying to give students in financial literacy, not just in the classroom and with books, but hands on,” Wilson said.

It is the first year all graduates must meet financial literacy requirements, he said.

Sharon Lambert, head of the high school’s Business Department, said students will learn how to handle their finances by the time they graduate.

“It’s about know how to write a check, knowing about credit, interest, penalties, also how to use debit cards, budgeting, buying insurance, renting versus buying, those types of things,” Lambert said.

One of the goals of the program is also to highlight banking as a career, she said.

Bank President John Witherspoon said the high school branch, which will be paid for by the bank, will have the same services as any other of the bank’s 10 offices in central Maine. The branch supervisor will be a bank employee.

“We hope to have some of our employees come in and help on the educational side, in terms of teaching them how to use a checking account, manage your credit appropriately and what you can afford on different incomes,” Witherspoon said.

Witherspoon said school bank branches have been a growing trend since the 1990s, with more than 400 operating nationwide. In Maine, there are similar school branch banks at Mt. Blue High School in Farmington, at Cony High School in Augusta and elsewhere in Maine, he said.

Students from both the high school and the career center will be invited to apply for the two teller positions at the school branch, just as they would for a job at the bank. If the students are under 18, the jobs will be part of the school’s cooperative education program, where students learn while working at a paying job.

“They are employees of the bank; they have to follow all of the guidelines just as if they over there at the other branch,” Lambert said.

Teachers also will be able to open bank accounts at the school.

Doug Harlow — 612-2367

dharlow@centralmaine.com