We are trying to write some new bilaws to our PTO and had a question for discussion. What role does the headmaster actually play in PTO. Is she an executive officer? Does she make all the decisions of the PTO. Just curious about your responses. Thanks

We have a staff member(and parent)as our president. We are a new pto, jumpstarted by the principal. There are other officers who are either employed by the district or their spouse is.
We have had meetings, at each one communication from the pto has come up but,the principal has said no to a newsletter. Parent Involvement is low at our school and that is why I ran for an office was to get more parents involved. I just headed up the bylaws comittee and we included committee in our bylaws writing because after being elected in dec. We have not asked for any committee volunteers. We were having 3 hour meetings to plan every detail for any function and try to get our selves up and running also.
Let me say this If you have a fundraiser and some of your officers felt that the rep. had mislead you or not given you all the facts would he be the only one you as a president would call back? I have personally ask to look at someone else but it doesn' seem to make a difference. Because of these and different situations,I have questioned and stated my opinion openly that I feel the principal is controlling to much of what is going on.
At our last meeting of the year, we voted the bylaws in hopefully they will be followed. We had our normal 2 or 3 teachers but we also had about 15 to 20 other teachers. Our principal has been wanting something that will cost about 20,000 dollars. Guess what came up wasn't on the agenda and I as an officer didn't even know was coming up. Of course it got voted for and the 1st fundraiser of the year is devoted to it. Of course he has openly stated other ptos he worked with gave all their money to the school.
Another project we had discussed for 3 meetings was brought up in the since that the teachers would have to find time to help upkeep it and of course they weren't as eager so that was tabled. [When it was decided they would have to upkeep I don't know.
Thus after questioning alot these past 6 months and putting in a lot of hours because 3 of our officers work. I decided it is not worth the stress and the hours my still at home child spends following after me. So I have resigned my position.
I told the president I will help on a project. I will of course still volunteer in the classrooms.
Th last thought on the committees,they still plan on waiting til fall to get those rolling wasting the whole summer or still wanting to plan everything? Who knows.
I copied alot of things I found here hoping we would use them or learn from them. I'm leaving them in my notebook. Hopefully who ever inherits it will be able to use some. Thanks for everything.

You might want to check with your school district. It is a violation of our school district policy to have a district employee serve as an elected official on the executive board. It is also against policy to have a district employee as a signatory on a PTO/PTA bank account.

Gallen,
Are all of the teachers involved also parents of kids at your school? How many are there?
I think your board should put the matter in front of the whole organization and let the members decide.
As much as you try, you're not going to satisfy everyone. So, as best as you can, do what the majority wants. Then make sure your bylaws reflect what and how you're going to do.

Well, the Teachers feel they are being discriminated against because they are a parent as well and that they shouldn't have to chose between being a parent or a teacher. They feel they should be able to run for any position without any restrictions. However, it's okay to restrict my husband and myself from certain positions on the board - which I understand and am okay with - but what's good for one in this case isn't good for another. Since I did my original post in an effort to make the Teachers happy and get on with everything we agreed to let one staff member run on the "elected" board but restricting President and Treasurer. President because of the conflics everyone has listed and Treasurer because they would be writing the school checks. We had a meeting today with the Teachers and they do not seem to be even happy with this change.

I'm not sure how much more the board can give. We have discussed just walking away from all of it and letting the school do as they please because it's very tiring. The Teachers were apparently very rude to our representative that was there speaking with them and there is so much bad blood now that I don't see anyway to fix it. I just don't know if I can put in another year (this is my 3rd year on the board) working my butt off when they aren't happy with anything we are doing anyway.

My thought at this point is hand it over to them and let them do it themselves! Either way we will turn out to be the bad guys.

Thanks.

We don't have teachers as officers but we do have 7 teachers as committee chairs. When a situation occurs the pits them(as chairs) to go up against the school, they would have to abstain from voting. This is in our standing rules but it never has occured in our school.