gizmo_captain@comcast.net;136492 wrote: I am brand new to any of this. I am wanting to join our PTO. One question is that the school has had the same President and committee members for the last 3 years. Is that normal? I have never heard of a vote,should it be sent out to parents??

LOL I hope you're not at my school. (I start talking about elections at the October meeting, and they are held in April(!) and still some people 'don't know' lol.)

Yes, the bylaws should stipulate some form of election process. A lot of times, the same people are the only ones running because either noone else is interested or noone else goes to the meetings. It is hard to fault the leaders for that unless they are shooing people away or doing things secretly. Elections are done at meetings, typically. It is not really feasible to have a mass-mailer type election.

I am brand new to any of this. I am wanting to join our PTO. One question is that the school has had the same President and committee members for the last 3 years. Is that normal? I have never heard of a vote,should it be sent out to parents??

Our school has a voting committee. Yours uses the term Parliamentarian, but its the same thing.

What exactly does your voting committee do? Our Parliamentarian was an elected office (Pres, VP, Sec, Treas, Parli) and the person had the role of safeguarding the bylaws and RR procedures at meetings. Does your committee play this role at meetings? Note - I'm not challenging you, merely interested in the way you do it.

Our school has a voting committee. Yours uses the term Parliamentarian, but its the same thing. Your bylaws should outline the rules of voting and you should have a person or more than one person to make sure the rules are being followed. They are not running for office and just make sure all is fair.
Although you have a committee designated to create a newsletter, some have one person. It depends on how many are really needed and the extent of your newsletter. If only one person volunteers, that's your committee. I wouldn't get hung up on the titles, but you do need to follow your bylaws or have them revised to be more in sync with how its been run more recently.

I think you've already gotten some good advice. We had a parliamentarian in our elementary PTO but middle school PTO did away with the position.

I always liked having one. We didn't use super-strict adherence to Robert's Rules, but we followed the basics. And it was nice to have someone who's job was to always have a copy of the bylaws at meetings, keep us from violating our bylaws, and then just monitor the basic motion protocal.

It also gives the president a backup (if it's the right personality type) to help the group from straying from the agenda and going down rabbit trails. It's a little different when someone says, "As Parlimentarian, I'd advise the group we've moved away from the current agenda item and need to save this discussion for later".

Note - it can be a hard job to "sell", but it's actually a piece of cake to do (if you aren't concerned with every nuance of RR).

As far as your second paragraph, if the group is going to be strict regarding meetings, having a parliamentarian takes some of the load off of the president, I think.

I love the idea of having a small group of non-officers producing the newsletter. Content needs to come from whomever is in charge of the area being written about -- President can have a section, maybe a financial section, and sections for whatever events need talking about. Book Fair chair should send a paragraph about the book fair, etc. The committee then does editing and layout and adds other content like date reminders. We are using a non-officer this year for the first time ever.

:crosses fingers

You can't selectively ignore bylaws, but you can be creative. If the secretary needs to do the newsletter, then the secretary is the head of the 'Newsletter Committee."

You can also pass standing rules which alter small things in the bylaws -- the newsletter committee shall be dissolved for the 2007-08 school year. The president shall be responsible for issuing the newsletter. (for example) In our bylaws, it states that standing rules only require a board vote, and should only be used for small changes/adjustments like co-presidents or eliminating a fund raiser that is in the bylaws but not required this year.