On Monday, November 14, five East Chapel Hill High juniors - Dora Pekec, Natalie Troy, Makenna Meyer, Mac Stringer, and Noah Clapacs - traveled to our State Capitol to compete in the first ever high school version of Fiscal Challenge.Fiscal Challenge is an economics competition put together by University of North Carolina faculty that seeks to have students at the college, and now high school, levels learn about our federal budget. This year, they were asked to discuss the high public debt-to-GDP ratio, and how it should be stabilized through fiscal policy adjustments (think cuts to spending, raising new revenues, and growing GDP).
In less than two months, these students wrote a 20-page paper, prepared a 12-minute memorized presentation, and answered 17 minutes of questions from a panel of judges who included a UNC economics professor, the NC Budget Office Director, and a member of the Hamilton Project, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
At the end of the day, their hard work was rewarded as they were named the inaugural competition's winners! Congratulations to our Fiscal Challenge team and their teacher, Brian Link.
