I agree with Twinrocks, your Board or a committee should be handling the creation of bylaws, and then when you have a set that meets the Board's approval, you present them to the general membership for approval. I also agree that the President should be controlling the meeting: opening the floor for discussion, recognizing speakers, controlling time spent in discussion, and making the decision to put forth a recommendation to table the issue if there appears to be no concensus or things are getting out of control.
This person(if they are a member of the group) certainly has the right to ask questions and make suggestions and even contact other parents to give them her opinion, so trying to fight her is only going to make things worse. I would suggest that your board put out the call for members interested on being part of a formal bylaws committee. You can then give them what you already have and maybe some examples from other schools and see if they can come up with a comprehensive set for your group.
Do you have a board? They should be the ones to set up bylaws and they should be in writting. This is for your protection! Once the board has approved the bylaws then they can go to a general vote of the membership. You could also set up a committee to do the bylaws and then have the board agree and then have the membership approve them.
As far as the one member who is the "fly in the ointment" if she is a paying member she has the same rights as any general member. If she has not paid for membership she has no rights at all. She, as a member, cannot table anything. That is up to you as the president. She can certainly ask for discussion and try to get her way by getting other members to vote against your bylaws but you, as president, can limit the amount of time anyone speaks at any meeting.
In order to keep the peace you may want to have her submit what she would like in the bylaws IN WRITING for the consideration of the board or committee.
The purpose of the bylaws is to solve just these kind of problems!
Hi this is my first time writing though I turn to these boards alot to help with our Parent Organization. I am the President of the Parent Organization at a small charter school. This is our 3 year in existence and my first year in office. The problem is we don't have any bylaws written down but have been using normal procedures the last three years. The problem is we have one person who is a grandmother of one of our students who is causing alot of drama about this. She has pestered us to write bylaws. We talk to some of the other charters in the area and used most of their bylaws adding what we were already doing. We brought them to the next parent meeting and this lady again started causing trouble saying they were all wrong and tabled the discussion until a further meeting. Now she is calling all of the other parents to have them vote for what she wants. My question is this, how did everyone else come about making their bylaws? Did you have a committee or just write them and have people discuss and vote them in section by section? Please let me know what others have done. Also if this lady isn't a parent or guardian should she still be allowed to participate in the meetings? All of the bylaws we have seen say parent or guardian.
