Get Involved

Find Your Friends!

We want to make using the Membership Directory easy for you so you can find colleagues and friends from your Association life. The Membership Directory is a safe, secure, and private listing of NEARO members.

Once you’re logged into NEARO.org, the Membership  Directory is linked at the top of the NEARO homepage. The pro tip to using the Membership Directory is: Less is More. For instance, if you want to find Gerry Gripper (and who doesn’t love Gerry?) just type in his first or his last name. Not both. Don’t type in 'Gerry Gripper', because for some nerdy techno reason, if you put in someone’s first and last name, you get “No Results Found”. So just put in Gerry, and you’ll find Gerry’s listing! 

And here’s another wonderful thing. Even though Gerry is listed in the Membership Directory as Gerald, the system will find him as Gerry.

Here’s hoping you find all your friends!  

History of the Joel Packer Pension Advocacy Defense Fund

In 2007, at the height of the negotiations developing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to assure NEA commitment to move toward full funding of the NEA Employees Retirement plan, the NEA Retiree Organization (NEARO) determined that it might need additional resources to support its interest in these negotiations. 

At this time the NEARO Board set up a special purpose fund to pay for such things as retaining a retirement attorney or an independent actuary to advise NEARO regarding the many technical aspects of the law and the actuarial calculations that formed the basis of the MOU.  

Hiring attorneys can be expensive, and couldn’t be covered by the $20 annual dues paid by NEARO members.

Thus the Defense Fund was created. 

The Fund is subsidized by member donations over and above dues. Over the years substantial actuarial and legal expenses have been paid from the fund. Legal advice has been sought by NEARO to determine the rights NEARO might legally have when there are amendments to the plan that may have an adverse impact on retiree members.  

The staff unions and NEA reached agreement on the MOU and later revised it further to reflect changes in the law and circumstance.

A major change came to the Defense Fund in December 2020 when the membership voted to change its name to the Joel Packer Defense Fund in honor of Joel, an extraordinary president of NEARO, who died suddenly while still in office.

The amount of money in the fund fluctuates depending on the advocacy issues and the financial needs associated with them.  

The Board of Directors is charged with approving expenditures from the fund.

-- Prepared by Patricia Orrange and John Thurston