Ex-educator speaks at Texas meeting

John Foster, past president of the St. Tammany retired educators organization and past president of the Louisiana Retired Teachers Association, was one of the featured speakers at a two-day conference in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 3.

The event was sponsored by the Association Member Benefits Advisors for retiree leadership throughout America. Thirty-two groups representing 24 states attended. AMBA is a membership benefits provider endorsed by the Louisiana Retired Teachers Association.

The topic of his presentation was "Recruitment and Retention of Active and Retired Educators."

Foster completed a pilot program in St. Tammany two years ago for the purpose of recruiting active education personal for the LRTA.

Almost 500 partnered with the retirees since all were in the same retirement system in Louisiana. AMBA heard about this pilot program and invited Foster to share his recruitment procedures two years ago at a similar conference. Since then LRTA went statewide with the recruiting program enlisting some 2,000 additional members.

At the recent conference, Foster prepared a script, and in conjunction with Perkin's Productions, a local company, produced a video featuring a review of information provided at the conference two years ago along with the conclusion of the Louisiana experiment. Foster followed the video presentation with a talk heralding the tenets for success as well as failure of such a program.

He also provided an additional idea for the use of electronics for this type of recruitment program to the conferees.

Published on NOLA.com

Published in The Times-Picayune Sunday, November 8, 2009