Great advice from the other posters. In addition, you might want to ask your principal what your parent group can do for him and the school. Free family events, lbook fairs, ibrary/classroom aides, researching assemblies, coordinating class trips. The list can be endless! Our group does fundraise but it is just a means to accomplish all the fun and educational events we do all year round. Of course, we could not be this successful without a committed principal and an amazing group of parents.
My advice - find some common ground and start there. Assure your principal that your group is there to enrich the students' school experience and not to get in his way. Good luck!
We now have the PTO Today Plus Membership and with their Start-Up Toolkit as a guide, we are moving forward to set up a well-organized PTO.
We have a meeting with the Principal for next week. Hopefully the reasons it appears that he doesn't want a PTO, is because of the lack of organization of previous PTOs.
I am looking forward to a positive outcome for our meeting.
I wasn't involved then, but I heard our principal wasn't all that keen on PTO when they first got it started. It was because she came from a low-income school district and the PTO there was a pain in her butt, generally just a bunch of parents screaming for changes and not really being helpful at all.
We had to win her by becoming a real asset to her. Not just in raising funds, but in everything. I'm certain our parent volunteers besides doing all the PTO things saves her two salaries a year in admin costs. We wrote her parent volunteer handbook, we've sat on the district's strategic planning committee and helped write the new technology plan. We have stepped up to the plate on everything she's asked for and it's really paid off.
We've found that you can't just complain, you have to be willing to really help make the changes you are seeking.
Now in addition to all we do for the school, we raise a boat load of money as well.
We've become a strong PTO and it would be a foolish principal that tried to impede us.
What are you doing that supports his fundraising now? Could he do it if you didn't?
My recomendation would be to do it a bit more slyly...
First try to sell the idea of becoming (assuming that you are presently not) a 501(C)3 non-profit organization. Use something alog the lines of "To legally be allowed to hold fundraisers, or raffles, etc." as your reasoning...
Once you are set as a legal non-profit, next have the President form a Bylaws committee, which would not include the Principal. Establish Bylaws that would give your group the control that it should have.
I also assume that your Treasurer is on the account. Definitely should be this way. If not this would be something that you would want to push. Just try to get it so that BOTH the Principal and the Treas. are on the account. Maybe the President as well...
Then down the road, once all of this is done, you can remove the Principal when your Treasurer switches banks, using the Bylaws as the reference.
But first things first. Sounds like your group needs the independant status so that you can obtain the authority down the road. Of course be careful as you need to be able to work with the Principal in order to keep doing all of the great things that you do.
While it would be possible for your group of parents to form their own independent group, not having the support of the principal would make it VERY difficult for you to operate. If you're currently having your meetings at the school, that would probably end. Holding events at the school would most likely be impossible. Communicating with teachers and sending home information to parents would be nearly impossible-imagine trying to do a fundraiser without being able to send things home with the students.
Perhaps it would be best to sit down with the principal one on one and try to figure out how you can all work together. Maybe your group should ignore the fundraising aspects and just focus on volunteer efforts within the school. Try to determine what role the principal sees for the group and ask what his concerns are in regards to the PTO taking over the fundraising and distribution of those funds. If he is afraid that the parents will just spend the monies wildly, then maybe you can suggest that a mission/purpose for the group be set and bylaws be written that align any spending with the educational needs of the school only. Hopefully you can find a middle ground that allows the parents to be more involved in the school and allows the principal to feel comfortable that he is not going to lose the funds he has come to rely on to programs outside of the educational purposes of the school.
Our public elementary school has been without a PTO for over 3 years. We finally had a meeting to attempt to organize and it appears that the principal does not want a "formal" PTO organized and any discussions regarding setting up a bank account were dismissed.
Is it possible for this principal to prevent us from forming an independent PTO with bylaws and from setting up a bank account (and tax-free status) independent of him?
Good luck! 
