School board to consider approval of Redstone Federal Credit Union high school branch

MADISON — High school students in Madison may soon have yet another unique opportunity to learn and gain crucial life skills thanks to a potential agreement between the Madison City Board of Education and Redstone Federal Credit Union to establish its first, real, student-run bank branch in a Madison City high school later this year.

Nathan Lombard, senior vice president of Redstone Federal Credit Union’s schools program, explained that this experiential opportunity for students will allow them to provide basic services to customers while learning and applying valuable life skills.

“We know that there are a lot of mistakes made by youth when they get into the real world because they haven’t had the foundation of financial education that perhaps we did when we were growing up,” Lombard said. “It’s basically a cashless society, and they just don’t get the opportunities, so we created a program to help bridge that and to provide an education to them that they won’t get naturally that will maybe help them be better prepared when they do enter the workforce.”

Lombard said the students would be trained for two weeks during the summer and offer real, albeit basic, transactions with teacher oversight. These teachers are also trained. Some of their services would include deposits, cash withdrawals, check cashing, loan payments and account transfers. During this “rigorous” training, Lombard said the students also learn “soft skills” that can be applied in any field they choose.

The school branches are also connected to another RFCU branch for support.

Another unique aspect of the RFCU school branches are the affinity debit cards. These special debit cards feature the host organization on the front, and each purchase—regardless of amount—with the card would earn the host organization 10 cents.

LeJuan George, senior business development officer with RFCU, explained that about 500 cards in a community averages out to about $1,000 per month for the organization on the card. Any RFCU member can easily switch to the affinity card at no extra cost. George said RFCU would also work with the host school to conduct card drives twice a year.

“I could say that this could bring in the most money of any school we have because you’ve got such a presence here already,” said Madison resident Jan Bias, vice president/human resources for RFCU.

There will not be prepaid options for the affinity cards.

The board removed the approval of a bank branch from the list of “Actions Items” on their Feb. 7 agenda, though they did go ahead and approve an agreement with RFCU for the affinity cards later in the meeting.

The first student branch in Madison would open this fall. Lombard said RFCU would handle the buildout once a location is chosen inside the school. Hartselle, Decatur and Austin high schools are three area schools who operate their own RFCU branches.

“We are very excited and can’t wait to get started with this,” said Superintendent Robby Parker.