OK, here's my story, it's kind of long and "sticky". 3 years ago I enrolled my children into a new PUBLIC Charter School. The schools Charter basically states that the parents hold the School board position. It's an ELOB school ( meaning : more hands on learning) . I love the school, it been a wonderful experience for my children (who have trouble reading and don't learn well from books)
Any way, our school is also different because we do something called "Crew Parenting" meaning there are usually parents in the class room volunteering all the time. We have a required # of hours that all parents must do for the school.
I'm a stay at home mom and I have been on the fund-raising committee at our school for the last 2 years. At the end of last year, I won my nomination for Vice Chair on the PTO/A (or Partners in Education /PIE as ours is called) . 4 other ladies (whom i've worked with often, and become friends with) won other positions on the PTO/A board . We were all very excited to be working together., and had made big plans, for some BIG changes.
At first it was great, we had a "Kick off" meeting at the end of last years election, where we got to know each other, and heard from the former PTO/A (which was only 2 people, the rest had quit. Yeah, that should have been a sign).
At this point, I feel in need to point out that our school was founded by a group of Muslim parents, and supported by a local Muslim church. Our PTO/A Chair was a very lovely Muslim lady, who seemed to be on the same page as the rest of the group. We believed that we would be restructuring our PTO/A, and the way that it had been functioning before (basically we didn't actually have a PTO/A , so we had to start from scratch). Long story short: Our PIE chair went loony, Trying to force us to have meetings every week, calling the members at 11:00 at night to yell at them for not responding to her e-mails, threatening to remove them from their post, and much more unpleasant behavior. The final straw was at a 5 & 1/2 hour long meeting where we were to approve the budget (she called the meeting in JULY!, budget doesn't need to be done til August!!) At this meeting she had mention the former PTO/A president by named and said she was lazy and unreliable in front of all of our PTO/A Board.
We attempted to speak with her regarding her behavior, personally, by phone, e-mail, and finally we drafted a group letter. She still insisted on having done nothing wrong, and in fact flat out lied about her behavior (which all of us had witnessed). We then spoke with other parents that were "major players" in the community. Another member (who is Muslim) of our PTO was approached by a Muslim community leader and revealed that our PTO/A Chair was under a tremendous amount of pressure from the Muslim community and the Schools Governing Board to make certain changes with the Organization. The fact is, she just couldn't take the pressure and was taking it out on the group.
In the end, as the PTO/A of a PUBLIC school we had to draw the line at some point, and we didn't want all of this strife going into the school year. So we held a private PTO/A board meeting with our members and the principal and voted her out in accordance with our Bylaws. It was gut wrenching, because we loved this lady, but she just wasn't herself anymore. She got really angry and wrote a letter to the school’s Governing board (which is also mostly Muslim), and a member of the school board called a meeting . But here's the kicker, he asked to speak privately with another Muslim lady on our organization. Then got upset when we insisted that we all meet together. When he came in, it was just him and not the rest of the school board. He talked down to us, rather than with us, refused to hear our side of the story, and the proceeded to tell us that the Governing Board had considered throwing out all of the PTO/A members and hold a new election at the beginning of the year.
He kept talking about how we had abused the trust of the "community" and that we had "caused damage" to the "community". Then he became upset with me when I stated that we had been working with Most of the school community and no one had been negative in any way. I later found out that he was referring to the Muslim community.
He also accused us of Not communicating with the Governing Board and getting approval for our projects. This was an untrue statement. We sent a copy of our Project Goals and budget outline to the Board in July. In fact, we had contacted the Board on several occasions and had been ignored up until we removed the Chair.
One of the projects for this year was to create our own PIE website . We promoted it at the Schools Open house yesterday. Then we received a message from the board today requesting that we remove the Web Site until they have the chance to approve it (at their August 25th meeting, or later).
Ok, now for my question.
I hate to say it because I feel that I am very excepting of everyone., but it seems so clear to me and everyone else in out group (especially our Muslim member) that there is a power play going on where the Muslim community is insisting on keeping a finger on the PTO/A. Our PTO/A , like our school, is made up of people from all over the world. We are a PUBLIC school in the end, with a public PTO group. What control, if any does the public school board have over the PTO/ PTA of a school?
I have read the Charter for our school (all 344 pages of it) and it states nothing about the Governing boards roll in PTO/A decisions. In fact, there is NOTHIG about the Parent Organization in it at all. I also consulted our Bylaws. They also had no statements regarding Governing Board approval on projects and decisions. I feel as though we are in our legal rights to refuse the Boards request, but I don’t want them to disband the Parent association we have created.
I was always under the impression that the PTO/A was a separate entity from the School, and the School Board. And that the only way the county could step in was in cases of criminal activity.
If anyone, can give me references or any information regarding the boundaries between school board and PTO/A please, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Amana PIE Mom
