PTO Today

I have a woman on our PTO who I previously posted a nightmare story about. Since then, she had continued to defy specific instructions given to her by the president and the fundraising chair. She has violated three of the Standing Rules delineated in our By-Laws:

1. The ultimate goal of creating unity requires all plans, goals, ideas, and correspondence to be presented to the president and board members. Finalization of plans, will then be presented at board meetings for approval.

She has gone off on her own seeking business donations and made promises to donors that she has no authority to make. She did not make her plans, etc. know until after the fact.

2. All correspondence to teachers, member, staff or public must be approved by the president or vice-president if president is not available, and the school principal.

She went to the gym teacher and made arrangements to purchase medals for our fun run winners without notifying anyone. She also approached a local bank and asked them to sponsor the cost of the medals and told the bank manager he could be the one to present the medals. She did not notify anyone of these actions until after the fact. She also informed me today that she would be sending her own handwritten thank you notes to the sponsors she obtained and that she didn't care what I did. I specifically instructed her that she was not to refer to the school or the PTO in her correspondence. Who knows what she will do?

3. Problems resulting in the inability of a board member to adhere to their duties as defined in the bylaws and and standing rules shall necessitate board discussion and determination if chairperson replacement or assistant is needed to achieve duty completion.

She is the Historian and has spent more time interfering in the fundraising function than doing her job. She had been directed to cease her actions by the president and fundraising chair and has deliberately gone ahead and done what she wanted anyway.

According to our bylaws Article XI, Section 2, "Executive board members found in violation of these bylaws shall be disciplined quickly and fairly."
First violation makes the board member subject to probation and required to submit a written apology to the PTO board. This shall include an admission of guilt and list the violationthat occurred. This letter shall be read at the next executive board meeting and copies filed with the historian" (hee hee) "and the principal."

She needs to leave. Six other members of the board approached me and said that because of what she has done that they will never be on another PTO board again.

Has anyone ever "censured" or done anything like this?

Help!!

It sounds like your by-laws are very clear on how to address the member. Assuming that she continues on her merry way even after writing the letter of apology and assuming that you want a Robert's Rules of Order solution, you'll appoint a committee to investigate the violations of by-laws. It should be made up of parents and (probably) one board member. The committee needs to review the by-laws for understanding and application to this situation and then interview this member and other members (such as yourself) that have first-hand knowledge of her behavior that is believed to be in violation. The committee will then present their report and recommendation to the board. The board has specific actions it must take during this board "trial" that can be found in the Robert's 10th edition. One of those actions is discussion of the report whereby the member may defend her actions. Then, a motion to dismiss with a second and a call for a vote will be in order. The member under investigation may vote.

Usually, when a member is faced with such public "humiliation" he/she chooses to resign ahead of time instead.

After the ethics committee issues its report, I wonder if it would make sense to send a letter to all the businesses in town, letting them know that Mrs. X was found guilty of ethics violations, she is no longer affiliated with the PTO, please do not work with her, etc. I'm not sure she'll stop even if she does resign or get voted out.

I'm disappointed in the people who say they won't ever be on a board again -- if all the good people leave, it's only the nutcases who are left! You should really collect those 6 people and get them to think about what you, realistically, can do: it's not like you can tie her up in the boiler room or send her to Siberia.

Phew--I'd be careful about sending letters around. You might face slander issues...which would be a whole other thing.

What you could do is inform businesses that folks that are collecting on your behalf will have a letter signed by the prinicipal to show they are representing the school with their requests.

No letter; no authorization to collect donations. That's puts it in the who can vice the who can't box.
d

we are having a similar issue, with someone collecting donations on our part. The differnce, we don't know who it is. We have a discription, but have no idea who it is. So our resoluntion is just as dlf has stated, we will have letters signed by an appropriate person and the local businesses will be informed that legit requests are only in paper form, nothing verbal.

Eh, you're probably right dlf. My thought was this person would be dissuaded from trying if she knew such a letter had been sent. The letter signed by principal approach still allows her to try to solicit, and either the business owner forgets to check or if he does, the problem parent says, oops I forgot the letter and tries a different business -- not quite the same embarrassment as, "we've been told not to give you to."

Perhaps you can threaten that if you hear the problem parent doing it again, you'll send the letter.

In rnbowmon's case, if that person is soliciting for your school but has no affiliation with it, that's fraud, and the police probably ought to be involved. Beammeup's situation isn't really all that different, if you've actually told that person not to solicit on your behalf.

Jewel3 misspoke when she said that the accused votes at his own trial. The accused is not allowed to stay in the room while the deliberations and vote of the trial are ongoing. RONR pg. 640.

To clarify: The accused is in the room for the entire trial including the closing arguments. RONR pg. 638 - 639. As far as the voting, you are correct. This is one time when a member is denied his/her voting rights. However, if the trial is conducted per RONR guidelines, it appears tha the defense counsel for the accused may vote his conscience (if a member).