PROVIDENCE — In her seventh-grade math classes at Aldrich Junior High School in Warwick, Gloria Rossiter finds the time to teach her students the basics of money management.

“When I do percentages and ratios, I saturate it with personal finance,” she said. Her students learn how to manage a checking account, how compound interest can make savings grow, and how taxes affect someone’s paycheck.

In other words, Rossiter integrates the teaching of personal money matters into her curriculum.

And that is the sort of effort that a state commission would like to see adopted by more school systems throughout Rhode Island.

Many middle schools and high schools in the state offer financial literacy and content, but in an unpredictable and uncoordinated manner, according to the findings of a report issued yesterday.

As a result, the Rhode Island Special Legislative Commission to Study Youth Financial Education yesterday made recommendations geared toward improving and expanding financial literacy in schools.

“As they earn their paychecks, our young people have to make increasingly more complex decisions about whether and how to save or spend their money,” the commission’s report said.

“High quality financial education programs in schools and other youth-oriented settings can help ensure that middle and secondary school students are prepared [to make] financial management decisions, which ultimately benefits the state,” the report said.

The commission, headed by state Rep. Raymond C. Church, D-North Smithfield, and state Sen. Daniel J. Issa, D-Central Falls, was formed last year by the General Assembly to study the status of youth financial programs in Rhode Island.

The commission unveiled its final report at a State House news conference yesterday afternoon.

THE COMMISSION FOUND that only about 5 percent of Rhode Island high school students take part in either a required or elective course that is dedicated to personal finances.

To strengthen students’ access to quality financial-education programs for youth, the commission made 10 recommendations, many of them aimed at the state Department of Education. For example, the commission urged the agency to do the following:

•Adopt statewide standards for youth personal financial literacy.

•Work with local school districts to incorporate financial literacy content into their existing professional development efforts for schoolteachers.

•Include personal financial literacy information in its statewide content guidelines for social studies, and perhaps for other subject areas, too.

•Form a task force on youth financial literacy to put together a statewide strategy, action plan and marketing plan to boost students’ knowledge of personal finance issues. (The agency is to report its progress twice a year to the General Assembly, starting in January.)

The commission also seeks to increase, by 5 percentage points a year over the next five years, the proportion of high school students who take part in financial literacy courses.

State General Treasurer Frank T. Caprio said, “The students in Rhode Island need to show aptitude in English and in math, but they don’t need to balance a checkbook” to graduate.

The commission’s report shows what sort of personal financial education is now in place, and also points to ways that school curriculums can improve, Caprio said.

“There’s never been a time, in this country and in Rhode Island,” when personal financial education was more important, Issa said.

This is especially true given the “never-before-seen levels of credit-card debt” and college education loans that burden many young people, Issa said.

Broadening financial education programs in schools will help “build a strong sense of financial responsibility” among Rhode Island youths, he said.

The Rhode Island Jump Start Coalition, part of a national organization that evaluates financial literacy in young adults and promotes the teaching of personal finance, hailed the commission’s findings as a sound first step.

“Now that we have quantified the problem,” Rhode Island can take steps to broaden the financial education of middle-school and high-school students in the state, said Jim Hedemark, the group’s executive director.

The commission stopped short of mandating personal finance programs for local school districts. (Only eight states require that students receive personal financial education as a condition of high school graduation, the commission found.)

Issa said that the commission’s intention was mainly to determine first the status of personal financial education in Rhode Island schools. “You have to start somewhere . . . . You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

Hedemark said that implementing such programs should be left to local school districts. “What’s right for Westerly may not be right for Woonsocket,” he said.

The commission also did not identify additional sources of money that could be used to help pay for the education.

Caprio said that additional money is not needed to expand and improve personal financial education. “The focus should be to incorporate this type of education” into existing programs, he said.

“Teachers are already there, the classrooms are already built,” he said. “I think the educators in our system are very motivated to deliver the lessons that will advance the students.”

Rossiter, a member of the commission, said she has been a schoolteacher for 20 years. It would be difficult to include a separate, mandated personal finance course in middle schools because “there’s not enough time in the day,” she said.

However, she said she hopes that the commission’s report will encourage local school districts to integrate personal financial education into their existing programs.

ndowning@projo.com