Now would be a great opportunity for you to sit down with your Principal and review your PTO's Strategic Plan. Are there any goals or objectives that s/he disagrees with? Or are there goals and objectives that are so important to the administration's vision that the underlying action items should be given shorter periods for accomplishment?
The other topic to discuss is your mission statement. Perhaps the PTO sees itself as a fundraiser while the Principal sees it as a communications medium for parents, teachers, and students. Do you have an email blaster that can send out weekly or monthly news on topics of your members' choosing? That is, can they opt in for news on sports, clubs, academics, volunteers, AP, IB, GT, special ed, vocational training, etc? Do you have an editor or webmaster for this blaster? Make sure your PTO is very, very efficient in parent, teacher, student communications before you digress into global education policy, ED grants, state allocations, or district issues. Many managers, perhaps including your Principal, don't want visionaries; these managers only want humble workers who do their specific assignments well, which in the case of a PTO is communications.
Perhaps after the Principal and the PTO align themselves on a common mission statement and Strategic Plan, then many of your conflicts might disappear.
Good luck!
