Tom Curtis to David Speicher re: CORE membership

From Tom Curtis, 1/25/06 to David Speicher

Hello David,

Cathy Burner passed your question along to me. My name is Tom Curtis. I am a member of the CORE Advisory Committee. I will answer your question in the best way I can.

I cannot provide you with a number of members, as we do not have a prerequisite of being a paid member to be part of CORE. We did, upon request set a $5 membership fee for those willing to contribute and to help defray some expenses during the election of STRS board members. Otherwise, CORE members pay their own expenses. We also started a CORE Legal Fund, with the intention of taking legal action against those board members and STRS staff we believe are guilty of not fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility to us, the STRS membership.

CORE has not placed a great deal of importance on membership numbers as other organizations regularly do. CORE members first came together by developing an email chain. This started by Molly Janczyk and Sondra Stratton getting email addresses from those attending the STRS board meetings and has grown ever since. Because we use email as our communication tool, we really have no idea of how many educators we reach, but we estimate at least 20,000. We obviously cannot afford to use snail mail, as the cost of such is prohibitive. CORE has no officers, no constitution or by-laws. CORE has an advisory committee, which meets monthly, except July. CORE also has an annual general meeting, as required by law, for our nonprofit status. We meet at the STRS during the STRS board lunchtime, so we have no cost for a meeting site and any educator is welcome. CORE is simply a group of mostly STRS retirees, but we also have attracted many actives. Actives usually cannot attend our meetings except in the summer months, when they are not working. But, because we correspond by email, actives can reach us anytime they desire.

I have attached an application that you might copy and pass out to your membership. We are in need of funds for this election. CORE endorsed 2 of the 9 active teachers who obtained petitions from the STRS. (Dr. Thomas Hall & Mark Fredrick) We would hope that your RTA might help us in obtaining active teacher signatures for our candidates. Dr. Thomas Hall is an economics professor at Miami University and lives in Cincinnati. We feel he has a background that would be beneficial to the STRS board. If your RTA were able to provide us with any assistance in obtaining signatures, we would greatly appreciate it. Each candidate must obtain 500 signatures, representing at minimum 10 of the 88 counties in Ohio. Tom Hall would be glad to come to your next RTA meeting and speak briefly to you group, as to why he is running for the board.

Please feel free to contact me with any further information, questions or concerns you might have. In closing, I would like to thank you for your support of our organization and I hope you will find others that might join us as well.

Sincerely, Tom Curtis

CORE Advisory Committee Member

----- Original Message ----- From: David M. Speicher To: Cathy Burner Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 9:56 AM Subject: CORE membership

Cathy - What is CORE's membership? Is there an area of the state where it's strongest/weakest? Thanks very much.

David Speicher

Chm. Legislative Committee

Union County RTA