September note to leaders—musings of the executive director:
Hello, and happy September. Some of you are happy not to be heading back to the classroom, but I know for many it can be bittersweet to see the busses heading out again. Here are a few things I want to share with you, and most of it is information that I hope you will pass on to your members. 1. There is still a lot of confusion about INPRS, and they didn’t make it any better when they sent a postcard out, telling us that we might be eligible for a 13th check. I am going to speak to someone about being more careful when they send out information. We have had a number of questions about what “might be eligible” means. I don’t know why they said it that way. Anyone who is getting a pension from the state and who taught ten or more years should have received the “stipend” that they call a “13th check” but was just part of the September check. Here is the breakdown: If someone taught for 30 years or more, the stipend is $450. If between 20 and 29, it is $375. If between 10 and 19, it is $275 If between 5 years and less than 10 years in case of disability, it is $150. 2. When you meet your local, you may want to say something about what INPRS is. We still have many people who think that IRTA hands out the money for pensions each month. We are a private association where membership is voluntary. INPRS (Indiana Public Retirement System) is the state agency that collects and disperses pension money. We are happy to try to answer questions, and sometimes we can even contact our friends at INPRS to get help with a problem, but we can’t really deal with pension questions.
3. I want to emphasize that we want everyone possible to attend the Fall Workshops, but it is very important that you have some of your members come who are interested in membership and legislation. You or your president should have received a notice about the workshop a couple of weeks ago. If you need info, e-mail or call us. 4. Pat Stone and her state membership committee have some great ideas, handouts, and fun presentations to present to help you with membership.
5. Have you contacted your new retirees and invited them to a meeting? Remember, a phone call is the best way to show them you really mean it! Emails can be ignored, letters also. But a phone call means you really took the time to make the direct contact.
(See the article by Cheryl Stalter in the upcoming newsletter! If that doesn’t tell us how to get members, nothing will.) 6. We are already involved with meetings about the coming legislative session. It is going to be very difficult, and there is a “new” idea floating around that is not in the best interests of retired educators. We will go into that at the workshops, and will also give ideas about how our members can help us. 7. Are you encouraging people to sign up for dues deduction? It really helps us a great deal in several ways. INPRS did put in a new data base recently which caused us a few problems with our list of those on dues deduction, but we feel it is just about cleared up. 8. It is always a challenge to keep our data up-to-date. You are the main and most important people to help us with that. Please e-mail Julie and Linnie when you get new members, when someone dies, or when you get new addresses and phone numbers. E-mail addresses seem to change most frequently. Please remind your members to send us the new one when they change. If you send us the names of deceased, we really need the date of death and the city or town where they lived. 9. Before I close, I want to say something about our staff. Some of you may have noted that we have two less staff members than we did a couple of years ago. My staff has worked VERY hard since I came, but the past few months have been especially busy, and yet they have accomplished more than ever. Julie put the RA book together so that we didn’t have to have extra help for that project. She keeps finding new projects that she can learn and take over. Our financial employee has left, but we now have David who is learning quickly and doing a great job. We are going to do a trial of tracking phone calls. It is amazing some days to hear the continual ringing. One can hardly see Linnie because of the many things on her desk as she works on the memberships, but still continues to be the voice of IRTA when those phones are ringing. And finally, we are happy to have Debbie. She just keeps working away and never gets flustered when we have hundreds of memberships to put in the data base. Once again, thank you for all that you do for retired educators and for our association! I hope you are looking forward to a beautiful Indiana autumn. I will see you at the Fall Workshops. Nancy
