SEA side with Chery 1-7-16

WELCOME BACK! I hope everyone had a relaxing winter break and enjoyed the holiday season.

I was fortunate enough to spend some quality time with my extended family, it was glorious!

–PERA training will begin soon – the process will be straightforward – a majority of the information you will need you already have written into your lesson plans. J The trainers will be trained early in February and then the whole district in March during staff development.

–NEA will be conducting a poll of member households this week in early primary and caucus states, including Illinois.

–TRS needs proof that you are who you say you are so they will begin contacting members to go into the system and provide a birth certificate, driver’s license or passport as confirmation. It is VITAL that you take care of this or when you retire you will NOT be paid. Go into your TRS account (if you don’t have one, set one up – it’s easy). Once you log in the system will tell you what to do – they provide you with a document that you print. I copied my driver’s license, attached it to the bottom of the letter and faxed it to the number provided – easy! At the next rep meeting I will go through the process so they reps can see how to do it so if you have questions, please hold on until after the 25^th. For those that are retiring this year, HR said they would cover this in your retirement session sometime in February or March.

–For those who need to renew their licenses this year – information will come through HR in late March or early April – the ISBE (ELIS) system will not allow you to begin the process before then. Hopefully you have been continuing to log in your CPDUs on ELIS.

–I will begin to make building visits soon just to check in with everyone. I will bring Jackie Robbins, our UniServ Director, with me. She is looking forward to meeting everyone and seeing just how great you are – I’ve been doing a lot of bragging about “my” members. J

As always, if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns, please contact either your building reps or me. Keep up the great work and most of all keep the conversations between each other flowing.

Chery