On July 1st, many ATRS members will enter a new phase of life as a retiree or a T-DROP participant. ATRS has had several staff members volunteer to work on Monday, May 25, 2015, Memorial Day, for the seventh year in a row. The office hours will be from 8:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Please know that ATRS staff is willing and ready to help you by a telephone call or in office visit if you wish.
May 31, 2015 is the deadline to enter the T-DROP plan for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, and the next time to enter is May 31, 2016. If T-DROP is what you intend to do for the coming year, please don't miss the deadline.
Most school employees retire on a July 1. That means if you intend to stop work after the 2014-2015 fiscal year and retire, ATRS must have your retirement application in by May 31, 2015, in order to be a July 1, 2015 retiree.
Both retirement applications and T-DROP applications may be delivered to ATRS by:
- fax at 501-682-2359; or
- as a scanned document attached to an email to info@artrs.gov; or
- by personal delivery to the ATRS office at 1400 West Third Street, Little Rock, AR; or
- by courier such as Federal Express (there is no delivery of Federal Express and other courier services on weekends); or
- by the U. S. Postal Service. ATRS will treat the postmark date as the date of receipt by ATRS, so please make sure the postmark date is stamped legibly so it can be read.
ATRS must have actual possession of the application by May 31, 2015 in order to become a July 1, 2015, retiree or T-DROP participant.
Please call ATRS at 501-682-1517 locally or 1-800-666-2877 toll free to confirm receipt of your retirement application or T-DROP application, regardless of the type of delivery.
ATRS Employers: Please send this executive director update email to all your staff via a broadcast email to all employees.
Remember that ATRS has a new website that allows members to have direct access to specific member account information. This may help as you look at retirement. Over 5,000 members have direct account access to account information. Here is the link to the instructions to sign up: https://www.artrs.gov/general/director-updates/716-08-15-2014-executive-director-update-the-new-atrs-website.
You can sign up to obtain these executive director updates through your private email address. Updates are made throughout the year such as at retirement season and other times when information needs to be shared. Now, over 8,000 people have signed up to receive this executive director by listserve email. You can find the link to sign up for listserve delivery to these updates here: https://www.artrs.gov/login
In addition, over 10,000 people have access to the ATRS executive director updates via direct email delivery. It is always a great pleasure for ATRS staff to learn of more ways to provide information to ATRS members, employers, and beneficiaries. The ATRS Board is committed to providing a system that is member friendly and transparent.
You can also get helpful ATRS information on the ATRS Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/arkansasteacherretirementsystem under the name of Arkansas Teacher Retirement System. Over 2,400 Facebook users get regular updates via the ATRS Facebook page. Go to the Facebook page and "like" ATRS to get daily updates. I try to go to the Facebook page every day to post information and answer member questions about ATRS. In addition, if you use Twitter, you can follow events at ATRS and issues of interest by finding the Twitter ID of ATRS or find George Hopkins in the Twitter directory. The link is https://twitter.com/atrs ATRS is here to serve you!
Respectfully,
George Hopkins