In-school credit union branch gets kids ready for real life: Betty Lin-Fisher

Students at Barberton High School are getting a real-life experience inside the halls of the school — right next to the main office, to be exact.

A branch of the New Horizon Federal Credit Union opened last week. It is run by student employees, with the assistance of their recently retired teacher who now is the high school liaison for the credit union.

The goal is to help high schoolers understand the importance of saving and other financial education that often isn’t taught directly in the schools or as much as needed.

The high school branch is believed to be the first in Summit County for a credit union and potentially Northeast Ohio, New Horizon Federal Credit Union CEO Michael Heidenreich said. High school credit union branches are popular in the Cincinnati area, he said.

Akron Public School’s East Community Learning Center has had a mock bank for several years in partnership with KeyBank. It is part of the business and health services career academy. Students help run the bank and can earn “KeyCash” to use for school merchandise or rewards.

Banking skills: Mock bank to enrich finance skills at East

At Barberton High School, the goal is to encourage at least 100 of the 1,200 students plus faculty to open an account for as little as $5. Students as young as 14, or freshman year, can open a savings account on their own and a checking account at age 16 with a parent signature.

Barberton Schools Superintendent Jeffrey Ramnytz loves that the credit union, which is in the space formerly used as a school spirit store, is offering real-life skills.

“We've been trying to teach these skills to our kids for a long time. We have a soft skill curriculum called Do Your Job, which we have been doing for about nine or 10 years,” said Ramnytz. “This is just another layer of cake to get these kids ready for life.”

“Amazon was just here talking about jobs, benefits and insurance. These are the things that we need to get, I mean, we're talking about that in the middle school because you have to start early,” he said.

New Ohio law requires more financial literacy for students

Financial education will soon get a bigger boost statewide with next year’s freshman. A new law goes into effect that requires one semester of financial education with a teacher who is certified with the state. Current state law requires some financial education, but it can be taught within another course.

I’ve long been a proponent of better financial literacy education in schools. I grew up in Illinois, where we had to take a one-semester consumer education class. I remember taking blind taste tests of Pepsi, Coke and a generic soda and doing price comparison of other groceries. We also learned basic banking skills, such as learning how to reconcile a checkbook. Yes, I know kids these days don’t know how to write a check and many adults don’t write checks anymore, but it is still important for kids to understand the difference between the balance in their account versus what they really have with outstanding payments or debits for bills.

I was surprised when I started as consumer columnist more than 21 years ago that Ohio didn’t have any school financial education guidelines. I even was invited to a conference in Washington D.C., which gathered various financial experts around the country, including representatives of the Federal Reserve, to try to come up with some guidelines to provide states on financial education since the level of teaching those skills was all over the map nationwide.

Lessons for adults: Betty Lin-Fisher: Financial Empowerment Center offers free financial help for Summit, Medina counties

Leaving a legacy

The credit union branch was the brainchild of Kristen Ledman, who retired in July after teaching in the Business Management Compact at Barberton High School for 21 years. The program is housed at Barberton and is a two-year career tech program that is part of the Four Cities Compact, which offers programs at Barberton, Norton, Copley and Wadsworth. Students from those four schools take the business management program at Barberton and can also open accounts at the credit union.

Ledman had reached out to Heidenreich two years ago to see if he would consider employing one of the program students as part of their senior year internship program. Heidenreich did and that student is still employed by the credit union and pursuing a business finance degree at Kent State University.

Ledman and Heidenreich also started talking about the possibility of opening a credit union branch in the high school. She was planning her retirement in 2021.

“I wanted to leave something for the students to be able to move forward in their life with personal finance,” she said.

She jokes that little did she know she would have two weeks of “retirement” before starting her new job with the credit union.

But Ledman loves the opportunity to be back in the high school in a different role.

For Heidenreich, he saw an opportunity to teach the younger generation — and get some new members.

"I think it's important to let the younger generation know what a credit union is and that it's an alternative financial institution and then understand that it's actually run by its membership. It's also a nonprofit,” Heidenreich said. Many will ask “ ’Oh, you're just a bank?’ No, we're not.”

Similar to a bank, there are checking, savings accounts, debit cards and other services, but there are rules and regulations that make credit unions different than banks, Heidenreich said, including caps on interest rates and easier access to loans for members.

"So I think it's to help the credit union movement as a whole as well. To get the younger generation involved,” he said.

Leading the next generation

Barberton High School seniors Miguel Guerrero and Aaron George are the credit union’s two employees and are students in the business management compact. They will staff the credit union when it is open on Tuesdays during one of their free periods, which coincides with a lunch period.

George said he’s gotten a lot of questions from classmates about the credit union. It’s mostly been confusion, he said. He hopes with marketing and education, students will consider opening an account.

George also worked with Heidenreich to brainstorm a giveaway: for the first 100 accounts opened, students would be put into a drawing for $250.

“My idea was we need something to incentivize these kids with money because I know my generation,” he said. “We're right here, right now. We don't really care about building credit; that’s future adult stuff. We’re still in high school. Why do I care?"

No students opened an account on the credit union’s first official day earlier this week, but Barberton High School Principal Henry Muren opened an account. George walked him through a folder of forms and disclosures.

Like Ramnytz, Muren sees the real-life benefits of the branch.

He sees the credit union partnering with the school for the financial literacy piece, once the new class is taught, to give presentations to educate the students.

Muren said the credit union also fits in with the guidance office’s 3 E’s: celebrating kids who are enrolled, or go to college, employed or enlist.

For kids who are employed, “a lot of them don't know how to cash checks and how to properly open a bank account. So we'd like to help that part of our population go through that process,” he said.

Beacon Journal staff reporter Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her @blinfisherABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/BettyLinFisherABJ. To see her most recent stories and columns, go to www.tinyurl.com/bettylinfisher.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: New Horizon Federal Credit Union branch in Barberton High is first