By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

Connally High School students will soon have the chance to earn credit while they learn credit when A+ Federal Credit Union opens a branch in the school.

Beginning in the fall of 2010, a campus branch of the credit union will give student the opportunity to work paid internships to fulfill the capstone requirement in the school’s Academy of Business and Information Technology.

“This is a finance/business-type academy, and we will have interns working in our branch there. They are considered employees of the credit union and we’ll have a person overseeing them who is a regular fulltime employee of the credit union,” said Kerry Parker, CEO and Education Foundation President for A+ Federal Credit Union.

Connally is in the fourth year of a federal small learning communities grant that inspired and funded the school’s conversion to a system of academies.

Connally staff and administrators toured schools with similar internship programs and decided it would be a fitting final course for the school’s Academy of Business and Information Technology, said Connally principal Daniel Garcia.

“One of our academies focuses on finance, business, accounting, that sort of thing. As we started looking for capstone opportunities – terminating experiences for our students – we thought it would be great if we could get some of our students into the credit union,” Garcia said. “It helps them think about where they’re headed in terms of their future.”

Students will be eligible for internships primarily through teacher recommendations, but Garcia said he wants to make sure positions are open to any student who would benefit from the opportunity.

“Some students will be able to get an internship through self nomination because sometimes good kids fly under the radar,” Garcia said.

Students from a variety of backgrounds take part in the credit union’s internship program at San Marcos High School, which started in 2007 and serves as a prototype for the Connally branch, Parker said.

“We get a pretty diverse group coming in, from some who have credit cards already to some that have never opened up an account in their lives and they really need to be walked through it,” Parker said. “It’s really getting the kids to understand the importance of saving and setting budgets, because they do have a lot of disposable income, and trying to save money out of that paycheck instead of going out and blowing it all.”

Young students strapped for cash are often targets of credit card solicitation, which without adequate financial education can lead to damaged credit and leave them deep in debt, Parker said.

With a lender right on campus, Connally students will have easy access to all of the services financial institutions provide.

There are students who are old enough to apply for (credit cards), and as they do it’s my expectation that we set up a system to counsel those students about what it is they’re applying for,” Garcia said. “They can do it at any bank, so I think we have a captured audience to talk to about financial responsibility.”

Parker said the credit union is not on campus to solicit student and it will not. What it will do is prepare those students for the day when the solicitors do come knocking.

“The good thing about having them start understanding credit cards now is that hopefully they are in an environment, maybe with their parents surrounding them, for them to get support as far as understanding the positive use of credit versus going off to school – there are a lot of firsts happening when they do that – and getting solicited and hammered by all these different ads,” she said. “So its good for them to start understanding early how to use it and how to build up their credit score. And we talk about that with students.”

The internships will be available to juniors and seniors and students in good standing can continue working at the credit union after graduation, through college and beyond.

“It’s great because we’ve had some [interns] that have turned around when they graduated high school and worked part time while they’re going to college . . . and we have some interns that are now fulltime career employees, and that’s a win-win for us.”