Disenfranchising the old folks in the IEA.

I’ve been to every state convention of the IEA for the past twenty years.

I won’t be a delegate at the next one.

It’s not that I don’t want to sit through four days of meetings, speeches and bad food.

I can’t.

The deadline for nominations for IEA-Retired is past. I never got a copy of the nominations form in the mail (yes, the  IEA still does these things by mail).

Ballots went out this week. I didn’t get one of those either.

I don’t take this personally. Even as a critic of the leadership, I don’t think (yet) that this was done on purpose.

Worse. It’s seems to be old-fashioned incompetance.

When I retired this past summer, I filled out the paper membership form (yes, they still do this by paper) with my check (yes, they still work with checks) and sent it to Springfield.

A month or so later I received my membership card and I was assigned to the Skokie chapter.

There is no Skokie chapter.

I have been keeping my eyes open for IEA RA nominations, but it turns out that it works on a different time frame than when I was an active member, so I didn’t know that I didn’t receive it because how would I know when I would receive it? If you follow.

This morning I read on Facebook that my friend Bob Kaplan, a retired teacher, was running for IEA RA delegate. So, I called Kaplan and, sure enough, I learned the deadline for nominations had passed.

I called Springfield. I talked with Kim Riley in the IEA-Retired office. It was very cordial. Kim was very gracious and checked the membership roles. I was on it. Assigned to the non-existent Skokie chapter.

Kim promised to look into things and get back to me. But it is too late to run as a delegate. I’ll make sure I get a ballot. I want to vote for Kaplan.

How many other retirees has this happened to? Who knows? And does anybody in the leadership care? Every aspect of the machinery is designed to keep retirees from getting active. Membership by mail rather than electronic? Assignment to inactive chapters? Please. That’s why IEA-Retired has one third the membership of the Illinois Retired Teachers Association.

And don’t forget that when it comes to pensions issues, it is the retired teachers who are the most active.

Anyway, I’m smarter now. I’ll keep my nose open for when the nominations come up for the NEA RA.

Meanwhile I’m going to ask IEA Communications Director for press credentials to the IEA RA.

After twenty years of meetings, speeches and bad food, I gotta go.