Rejoining/repayment of NCRA dues

Shari J. Steen:

Sometimes life just happens.  I think there should be a way to get back certifications and memberships in severe situations, like having a baby, cancer, death of spouse or child, etc.  I know when my son was born, my certifications was the last thing on my mind.  Of course, having only 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night for months on end will reap havoc on your mind/memory.  I think two years might be a bit much, though.

   I'm not sure that the length of time makes a big difference to me.  Suppose someone has a special ed child and stops out of paid employment to home school, or has a parent with Alzheimers and stops out to care for them during their last years. Or they have a problem with a major depression or other mental health issue.  Sometimes life's emergencies and tragedies don't happen in small chunks, and I would want to support the person through difficult times.

Maybe there could be some kind of reduced, modest fee for years when the person isn't working. Perhaps some affiliate status, without voting rights..  I'm thinking there won't be an avalanche of people who qualify for this, and it's better to encourage their continued contact, and for them to feel support from the community. There's always the law of unintended consequences, so I imagine there may be problems I haven't thought of, but I'm fairly certain there are other professions that allow this kind of thing.  I'm thinking this wouldn't apply to people who continue working as a CR and just drop out of NCRA, but rather people who stop working as a CR altogether.

Shari,

NCRA does have a membership status called Inactive Status. 

You qualify for Inactive Membership Status if:

• You have been an NCRA reporter member for at least two consecutive years.
• You are not working as a reporter—even part-time.
• You need to take a break from your career due to illness, disability, family leave etc.
• And if you’re certified, you want to keep your certification and have an extended time frame to earn your continuing education credits.

Here’s how it works:

1. You pay just one-half of reporter member dues ($115), and you get all the benefits of NCRA membership, except NCRA business-building marketing opportunities, such as ads in the JCR, the Court Reporter Sourcebook, and the NCRA Web site. You will be listed in the Sourcebook under a special section for Inactive members.
 
2. You can be “Inactive” for a total of six years during your membership life. Inactive status may be used for one membership year (January 1 – December 31) at a time. A new form must be completed for each year that Inactive status is being taken.
 
3. If you choose to continue inactive status beyond your first year, contact NCRA’s membership department after you receive your first dues invoice for the coming year.
 
4. What about your Continuing Education requirements? Your September 30th Certification Cycle end date is extended to September 30th of the following year each time you qualify for Inactive status with NCRA. For the first three years of Inactive Status the number of CEUs you must earn will not change. By the end of your first three years you would only be required to attain 3.0 CEUS. After three years of inactive status you will be required to earn an additional 1.0 CEUs for each year you remain inactive (for years 4 through 6 of inactive status). For example, a member taking advantage of 4 years of inactive status would be required to earn 4.0 CEUs and a member taking 6 years of inactive status would need to earn a total of 6.0 CEUs.
 
5. Any Continuing Education activities you participate in during your Certification Cycle, including those during your inactive period, will be applied towards the total number of CEUs required for the number of years of Inactive Status and the renewal of your certifications.
 
6. If you go back to work during an inactive year, contact the membership department to return to active status. In order to reinstate to active status, we will ask you to pay additional dues to reactivate your regular membership.
 
7. Please complete the application for Inactive Membership Status on the front of this form and return it to NCRA’s membership department along with your dues payment of $115.

Mike Friedman
Manager of Continuing Education and Program Development
mfriedman@ncrahq.org
800/272-6272 ext. 147

Mike,

Thanks for setting me straight here regarding the use of, inactive status, to preserve your certifications and membership.  I am going to forward your response to the reporters who brought this concern up to me.  In my opinion the procedure that you have provided seems very fair and straight forward. 

Again, Mike, thanks for your help and I appreciate all your hard work that you have provided to us.  Lastly, it was a pleasure to meet you personally at HQ's during Leadership.

keep punching

Stephen A. Zinone, R.P.R.

I am happy to see that NCRA sees a need for this type of thing.  As I said before, sometimes things happen and time just goes by and you don't realize that you've messed up and not paid your dues.  When my son was born and I went back to work when he was two months old, if I didn't write it down in a to-do list, it didn't get done.  My mind just left me for a while until I could finally catch back up on my sleep.  All I can say is thank goodness for my very good friend and very good scopist for keeping me in line and on time, or I would probably be sitting in jail working on tripts right now...

While I served on the Board here in Missouri, and though I can't remember the particulars, I can remember that we had a few reporters who figured out how to drop and re-join their membership to the state association in order to avoid a full year's dues...again, I can't remember exactly what they figured out, but I always thought it would have been much easier to just pay the dues than to go through all of that effort.

I never understood why, as professionals, reporters want to drop memberships to associations. Usually it's because they think they aren't getting anything out of the association to which they belong....again, my feeling is, you get out of it what you put into it.  Those who choose to sit back, not be involved, and just continually complain and gripe, usually are the ones who get nothing out of it. 

My post is certainly not directed to the initial author of this post, as I know nothing about her/his particular circumstance.

If reporters would do the math, they would realize that dues really are a bargain.  $230.00 divided by 365 days in a year, comes out to around .63 a day to be a member of their professional organization!!!  Come on!  How much cheaper can you get...we pay more than that for a bottle of water!  Most of us pay nearly that much for our local daily newspaper.

I certainly wouldn't want my accountant, my doctors, dentist, and other professionals to drop their memberships and certifications.  How many of us would go have annual check-ups, root canals, put braces on your child, et cetera, by a "professional" who is not certified and belongs to no professional organizations.

It's the same old story with reporters....we want to be recognized as "professionals", but many of our peers do not want to act like professionals...they just want to be professionals and be paid like professionals.  We can't have our cake and eat it too.

I can't believe there's a court reporter out there among us who cannot really find .63 a day to belong to their national association...oh, and let's not forget the time NCRA spends over on Capitol Hill with our legislators trying to convince everyone that we really are the "best record".....that's worth more than .63 a day to me!

If those who complain spent one weekend attending the NCRA Legislative Boot Camp or NCRA Leadership Conference, they would be happy to pay that .63 a day.  It is truly unbelievable what the staff at NCRA does for our profession.  Just take the time and go to one of NCRA's mid-year or annual conventions - they work their back sides off trying to entertain us, provide us with CEUs, and they do it with huge smiles on their faces.  They are around every corner trying to make our conference enjoyable and yet a very good learning experience.  I get tired just watching them run from one seminar room to the next!

I thank the NCRA Staff from the bottom of my heart for making our profession continue to thrive!  You all do an excellent and sometimes thankless job.   

Deborah,

I agree. 

Maybe there's something I'm not following from the thread, but personally, if I knew I didn't care enough about my certifications or wasn't able to make and save money for my dues every year, I honestly believe I'd seek other employment knowing that court reporting is not the job for me.  I mean, as a court reporter I feel that I can control how much I make and how much I don't.  The slower I work, the slower the checks come; the faster I work, the faster the checks come. 

Anyway, I don't know about anyone else, but I feel that my certifications do matter and they do help me make more money.  So with that in mind, I make sure they're paid.  And for the love of money, NCRA will surely not let you forget with all the mailers they send.  Honestly, how can one forget?   The money's out there if you want it, I feel, so I pay my dues quickly.  If anything out of the ordinary (not including pregnancies, sorry) i.e. hands go bad, other physical ailments, there's always insurance.  I don't know.  I don't mean to come off harsh at all, and I apologize if I seem a bit out of touch. 

Your post does not come off as harsh, but it does have a wee bit of Marie Let-Them-Eat-Cake Antoinette overtone to it.  Just because some people do not have problems does not mean all people do not have problems.

Take my mother as a for instance.  She was a reporter for 30 some odd years and never paid a dime to NCRA.  She was widowed, left behind with 10 children to feed and another in the cooker and no insurance money to help her make the transition.  So NCRA never made it on her priority lists.

And she treated NCRA wrong how exactly?

There are a lot of people out there with different circumstances.  We should not judge too harshly.

Dorothy M. Blankenship, RPR:

Just because some people do not have problems does not mean all people do not have problems.

I agree with you.  I don't think I know a person that doesn't have problems, actually.  I just remember reading one of the posts where someone mentioned you can forget to pay your dues.  Well, I'm sure a lot of people, myself included, have not paid dues exactly when they were due, but I have gotten reminders.  YES, you can forget, but being a court reporter that knows I have to keep my certifications up, I just don't have that option.  I just find it personally hard to forget such things.  I'm not claiming to not have any problems.  Being a single mother, I speak from truth when I say that.  I guess I just find it cheaper to pay up as soon as possible. 

Granted, I know people just don't have that option sometimes with hardships, but you never know what grievances you can file or help you can get to keep the lapses from happening if you let the years pass then claim ignorance afterward.  

As for your mother, I truly can't speak to that.  Her situation seems like something quite different from the one I'm speaking about.  She sounds like a pretty strong woman who obviously didn't lose any sleep over NCRA certifications and was able to raise her family the best she could.  I think that's great.      

Hey, Calendar Boy!  I just flipped the page to the NCRA stud page and there you were!

Okay.  Now to the subject at hand <g>.  I've read through this thread and just had one question that I didn't see answered.  Under the scenario where the reporter has dropped his/her membership and wishes to rejoin but is outside the window where they can recover their certifications, does the same waiting period to take the RDR apply?  In other words, if this hypothetical reporter had attained RDR status, then dropped membership, was unable to regain RDR status through payment of back fees because he/she was outside the time parameters, would he/she have to take and pass the RPR, take and pass the RMR, then wait five years before taking the RDR?

Enjoy your fame on the calendar.  Speaking as a "has been," the fame is fleeting <g> but it's fun while it lasts!

This is the first time I've heard of this information.  This whole time I've been paying the full amount, and I am currently not a working reporter.  I've graduated from school in 2004 and was an NCRA member, I believe, in 2002/2003.

Chuck,

I assume you are directing this post to me and not Dave Wenhold or Jeremy Alexander.   The individual who is not eligible for reinstatement would need to meet all certification eligibility requirements beginning with the RPR exam and each level of testing thereafter. 

Mike Friedman

Manager of Continuing Education and Program Development

mfriedman@ncrahq.org

800/272-6272 ext. 147

Am currently in a different situation.  Am living overseas, where my husband (a scientist) is currently doing research.  I'm not in a position to do reporting work at all ...  though I've been doing some scoping.  But I'm not about to renew my NCRA membership as a scopist.  I'm a reporter.  With a new machine bought right before we left the country (gathering dust) ... and I'm not about to lose my RPR, if I can help it.  (Though I'm not sure what happened to the three legs of the CM/RMR I passed lo those many years ago ...)  And money is tighter than I'd ever imagined it could be.  So while keeping my RPR is a priority, it's not going to be easy this year.

 Anyway, there are always circumstances we haven't considered.  So some compassion/open-mindedness might be worthwhile ...