PTO Today

OK I am going to throw this out there & see if anyone can help.

I am the President of our PTO - we are a year round school, so we are still in school. I can not be President next year. While I love the PTO, I was given a long term sub position this year & have been teaching. I love it so much I got an intern certificate to teach and went back to school to do the fast track certification. I have been offered the position I am in currently next year (at the very school I am PTO president). I am exhausted.

My entire board is exhausted. I can not come back for the sanity of my family. I just can not take on that much responsibility and go to school and work full time. My family needs me more. The rest of the board does not want to come back because they feel unappreciated and there just is not enough help most of the time.

We were suppose to get a nominating committee in May to put together nominations for next year & I could not even get anyone to do that - the board can not do it according to the bylaws.

I am afraid that the PTO is going to get disolved & we really have done so much for the school.

We are a charter school & we are trying to figure out a nontraditional, innovative group. Maybe titled Community Involvement Association (CIA) or Community Involvement Initiative (CII). Our school already has all the teachers on committees, from PTO to Title 1. Parents are on most of the committees as well & was trying to find a way to merge the groups, add a fundraising group and room parents. Our Vice Principal is very excited about this idea, but I don't know where to go from here.

Can anyone help???

Thank you!
M

Year round or not, there should be some sort of term start and end time on your position. As to the nominating committee, the whole idea of someone other than the board doing things is great . . . . but then reality sets in and it takes a board member to work with others to make this happen.

One year of inactivity does not dissolve an organization. If no one steps up - they will start to wonder where everything has gone and people will figure it out. I also really like the 2 hour volunteer program featured on this site - that looks like it could generate interest. We are starting with that this year (OK, my board does not know that yet - but I really see the need to keep fresh blood flowing in this group and letting people know that even just a little bit of help can make a huge difference.)

If you are going to make it a letter name besides PTO - make it an acroynm that is positive and spells a word perhaps. One school in our district uses K.E.Y.S. (ok, I don't know what it stands for. . . .Kennedy Elementary Youth Support...?) But it is something more.

One by-law rule that we have in place is that any parent at our school may be a member or officer, however - no teacher may server in an elected position other than the teacher member at large seat.