Mrs.inConn;133071 wrote: "efforting"? English is crumbling away fast enough. With people turning all our nouns into verbs, there won't be any persons, places, or things left in the English language.

Tim is the PTO today founder...I'm thinking he can use "efforting" if he wants to

I agree - bad idea. I'm not a fan of dues either but I don't think this is a good replacement. If her purpose is to eliminate the mandatory dues then maybe offer a choice: Pay $x dues, attend y meetings or donate z volunteers hours. Tim is absolutely right. She may have very good intentions by removing the dues requirement but her alternative sounds cliquey and exclusive, whether she meant it to be or not.

I agree that it was a strong-arm tactic to use her board position to further her own agenda. I'm curious how a board member became a member of the bylaws review committee. In my opinion that is a conflict of interest and would be strictly prohibited by my bylaws.

"efforting"? English is crumbling away fast enough. With people turning all our nouns into verbs, there won't be any persons, places, or things left in the English language.

No sugarcoating it -- I think it's a terrible idea.

Goes against all kinds of best practices that help to encourage involvement and community. 1. The need to appear and actually be open; 2) Lessening the reliance on meeting attendance as a measure of your group's success; 3) Efforting to be open to input from folks with all kinds of schedules and availability. Etc.

The proposed policy is opposite of all of those. If you struggle now with any reputation for clique-ishness or closed-ness, then it will get worse. If you don't, you will.

What is the proposer's rationale? What benefit is seen? I'm all in favor of eliminating dues (though I understand some folks' arguments for keeping dies), but the proposed change in your group eliminates all the benefits of eliminating dues.

And as another aside.... big-timing the committee/process because the board member didn't get her way is another best practice no-no.

Tim

Due to sickness, work hours, lack of babysitters, after school activities, etc. not everyone can make the meetings. It is difficult for many, but that shouldn't keep them from being able to vote. There are lots of volunteers that put in a huge amount of time doing school activities, but cannot make meetings.
Since our minutes are posted on our website monthly, we are able to keep our parents that cannot attend informed of what is going on. They appreciate our consideration of their situations and have actually volunteered more since they feel we are opening ourselves up rather than trying to shut parents out. Our voting is based upon either attendance at 2 meetings during the year OR volunteering 5 hours.
Do you have that many situations where people show up ONLY when you are going to vote on something? If not, then why change the bylaws. Although it could be said that you want people that are informed of what is going on to be the ones voting, there are a ton of people that vote in Presidental elections that don't know a thing about politics, but they vote!! Has the committee stated the reason for the change & what it hopes to gain from the change? Curious to know.

Recently our by-laws committee got together to edit and revise our by-laws. One of the people on the committee said that she didn't think that there should be dues that people pay to become a member. She thought that to become a voting member you should have to attend 60% of the meetings. The committee thought that was rediculous, and voted it down. Unfortunately the person on the by-law committee that suggested this idea is also a board member, and the board got together and thought that the idea should be voted on.
I would just like some input on what other thoughts are on this issue.