Hey all-
I have a question! We have a volunteer that runs a bi-monthly event at our school. She is the coordinator of it and has been doing it for the last 4-5 years. She does a great job. She has about 3-4 people who help her each year. Our problem is, that after this year she will no longer have a child enrolled in our schools that we are the PTO of. We sent out a volunteer form to get interest for next years committees and two people have already sent in saying that they want to co-chair this for next year. It does take 3-4 people for it to run smoothly. We are pretty sure that we have another 1-2 people interested also. And we still have to leave room for the new kindergarten parents. Well our coordinator does not want to step down. She plans on doing it still. She emailed a board member after she received the letter home and said she was still planning on doing this next year.

She has 3 kids but not of them attend our schools. They have all moved on, but she is refusing to. How do we kindly tell her thank you for all of your years of hard work, but it is time to give a parent of a child that attends our schools a chance to do this. We had no problem with letting her keep the position if no one else stepped up, but they have and now we have to figure out how to make this transition with out hurting her feelings, but also without letting her push us around. Any advice?

Our newly ammended bylaws state that any parent or guardian of a child that attends "our schools" is a member with all voting rights. If she doesn't have a child attending, she is no longer a member, right?

If that is what your bylaws say, then she would no longer be a member of your group, but that's not the angle I would use as my main "argument" when telling her that someone else is taking over the committee.

You actually say the perfect thing in your post: "kindly tell her thank you for all of your years of hard work, but it is time to give a parent of a child that attends our schools a chance to do this." Explain to her that you have several people interested in running the event and want to give them the opportunity to do so. Perhaps you can ask her if she would be willing to act as a kind of "consultant" for this next year and be available to answer questions if the new committee has any. That might give her a chance to pull herself away a bit more gradually.

"Thank you for all of your years of hard work, but it is time to give a parent of a child that attends our schools a chance to do this."