PTO Today

Hello, All -- I'm new to this forum and excited to have found you. I currently am serving a 2 year PTO term at my child's school. At this time, the board is considering a few changes to our by-laws, one of which would give the school principal a vote. Up to this time, the relationship between the board and the administration has been purely consultative in nature and has worked very well. I'm not aware of any board decisions that have been opposed by the principal in recent years. So, before voting in this change and (possibly) opening a can of worms that can't easily be closed again, I'd like your advice:

Although our current principal is fantastic (i.e. reasonable, friendly, an experienced educator and administrator), possible future principals may not have these qualities (past ones certainly haven't!). So, I wonder how a future principal who is, say, prone to being affected by flattery or who is overbearing and egotistical may affect future board member's votes. For example, is it possible that board members in the future may align themselves with the principal on votes in an attempt to seek favor (class placements for their child/ren with certain teachers)?

While our current board members wouldn't seem the type to do that, temptation affects everyone. And, there is no guarantee that future board members will be of the same make-up or temperament as the current members.

Also, the principal is already the "buck stops here" person for parents upset with school decisions/rules, etc. If we give the principal a vote, will we be causing him/her to also be seen as fully responsible for PTO decisions, thus adding that layer of grief to his/her plate?

If your school principal votes on your board, I'd like to hear your experiences!

I would recommend against this. The reason is that too often you see on these boards how the Principal is trying to control a group. Although a vote doesn't provide control, it does give more than just input. So by keeping it the way it is and not giving that vote, then down the road when a new Principal comes in you can maintain the working system.

In relation, I would recommend adding specifics to your Bylaws about what a staff member can and can't do. For example, I personally am against a professional member who does not have a child at the school being President or even Treasurer. The reason is that any professional member of the school has the Principal as their boss. The Principal may want something different than what the group might want, and this could cause a difficult situation for a staff member in the position.

PresidentJim

We always talk to our principle before we bring anything up in pto meetings that way if there are any questions to is it legal ect... Our principle is very involved in what we do because if there are any complaints she is the one who gets them from mad parents to the BOE. If she always knows what we are doing she will back us up 100% if she doesn't know it makes her mad because people think she isn't doing her job. She looks at everything we are going to do if she is totally against it we don't bring it up in a meeting, but if she is unsure we talk about it at a meeting and get everyones views before anything is decided.

PTO is mainly for the kids if priciple cares more about the kids it would be great but not all of them do. Some may vote more things down because they feel that they have enought on their plates and don't want to add anymore to it.

I lean the other way. Your principal is an important partner in the PTO. Ours was always a Board member, and thus had a vote.

In the PTO hieararchy, you have:

Member
Elected officers (Pres, VP, Treas, Sec, maybe Parliamentarian)
Committee chairs and other positions
Teachers and School Staff (probably members)
External stakeholders (probably not members)

Who comprises the Board? I'm not fond of the 4-5 people Boards that are pretty much only the elected officers. I'm in favor of a large board that well represents all your constituents. In elementary, ours consisted of elected officers, all committee chairs, parent rep from each grade (6), Prinicipal, Vice Principal, 2 teacher reps. So we had 25-30 Board members.

In middle school, we had a similar structure except not grade reps. For the school, I think we just had Principal and one (maybe 2) teacher reps. But there were only 3 grades instead of 6 and the kids are lot more self-sufficient.

Teachers and school staff could not hold any of the 5 elected positions, but they could chair a committee or serve other roles.

Our principal most certainly is a valued "partner" to our PTO. It would be unlikely that our PTO would proceed with any activity about which the principal voiced serious concern. However, I do think there is more potential problems that could arise by giving the principal a vote more so than issues (none that I'm aware of) by keeping the position a non-voting one.

PresidentJim made an excellent point about how a voting principal could cause a conflict of interest for the teacher reps who may want to vote the opposite of the principal but would have to think through whether or not it may affect their job if they vote against their boss.

Our PTO's size varies from term to term (depending on how many parent volunteers step forward to fill a position). At this time, we have 12 on our board including the executive officers and teacher reps. Our committee chairs are numerous but do not serve for a specified term like board members and do not have voting privileges.

In MA, all the "directors" of the organization have to be listed on a form filed with the Secretary of the Commonwealth. I think 25-30 is way too many, especially if you try to have a meeting with that many. Actually, we'd be very happy to get that many at our general meetings ... maybe you have a much larger school there in Texas?

Our by-laws also restrict officers to those with children at the school (though a teacher/ staff member with a child in the school can be an officer).

Our district has 2 principals and a school superintendent. They are all briefed on what pto would like to do first and they then let us know if it is ok with the school. They do not want to vote on any final decision. They only want to be able to give their opinions as to whether it would be beneficial to the children or not. I would not give them power of voting for the same reason as president jim. Their vote would most likely alter that of a staff member whether intentionally or not.
Our principals and superintendent are very supportive and their opinions definitely play a huge part in our decision making process. It sounds like yours is too. Did you ever hear the phrase "Don't change what isn't broken"? I think it certainly applies to this situation.
Good luck!

Our principal attends almost every meeting. He has veto power over any decisions made by PTO, but is careful to let us run our organization. I can't imagine that our principal would want to be involved in every vote. The details of organizing events, the paying of basic bills, etc... most decisions aren't that exciting - unless you are the chair in charge of that event. Our principal becomes much more interested and involved when discussing major purchases or major changes to our activities. In those areas we always get and value his oppinion - but not his vote.

Sounds like he gets the ultimate vote-veto power!
I would rather give him a single vote as a member of your board than give him veto power.

[I]In MA, all the "directors" of the organization have to be listed on a form filed with the Secretary of the Commonwealth. I think 25-30 is way too many, especially if you try to have a meeting with that many. Actually, we'd be very happy to get that many at our general meetings ... maybe you have a much larger school there in Texas?[/I]

We had this in place for an elementary school of 400-500 and a middle school of 900. For the middle school, there much fewer positions/committees so the Board wasn't as large.

But in both cases, the Board had the power - it made all the day to day decisions, especially regarding expenditures. We had only two general meeetings a year, one to approve the budget in the fall and one to elect officers in the Spring. So in our case, we wouldn't have felt comfortable with 4-5 people running the show completely to represent the opinions of 500.

In your case, you probably have financial issues voted on at a general meeting and the Board refers and recommends rather than having all the operational power.

As far as listing all the names on forms - we had that issue here as well, but the various governing bodies tended to have advice as to a subset to list rather than the whole set since none are compensated.

As long as your model works for you - that's what counts. Good luck.