Tamilyn, it sounds like you also have an agenda for wanting to hold this meet the candidates meeting. Be very careful that you don't let your personal views color how you present each candidate. Also, regardless of the legality of the candidate's meeting, keep in mind that you might have parents who are supporters of the candidates you are against. Those parents are also part of your PTA/PTO and could be upset if they get the impression that their PTO is acting taking an active roll in politics.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>"The organization will not, directly or indirectly, participate or intervene in any political campain." <hr></blockquote>

...note to IMP: it's normally abbreviated IANAL....

IANAL, but it would appear to boil down to whether a public education forum for ALL candidates qualifies as participation in ANY campaign. On the one hand, it could be argued that providing a forum for any candidate qualifies as participation in their campaign; thus, such a forum would be participation in every campaign. On the other hand, it could be argued that "participation" involves working for the election of a particular candidate; thus, by providing a forum open to every candidate you avoid providing benefit to any particular candidate.

My own opinion? I think you would be okay as long as the forum is organized in a way that prevents any candidate from having a legitimate complaint.

Last election cycle we had two contested seats. One pitted a serving board member who had voted for school closures against a leader of the effort to keep his school open. The other pitted a long-time board gadfly against a local business owner who had never attended a school board meeting. The district area council sponsored a candidate forum. However, they arranged for the local League of Women Voters to provide the moderator, write the questions, co-ordinate the structure, etc.

Hi! We have held a "Meet the candidates" night for the past 2 years, and are currently planning the next one. Both went over very well. We held it in the school auditorium, invited all the candidates, advertised in the local paper and had a moderator for questions. Each candidate had 5 minutes to introduce themselves and give a little background. We then opened the microphone to the audience and people were allowed to ask a question. Each candidate had the opportunity to respond to each question with a 2 minute time limit (too keep to the topic at hand!) It went very well, but I warn you to have specific rules in case of any HEATED questions. We did not allow any debating of any kind and the questions and responses were to be directed to the moderator. Very informational!

Thank you! I think we are going to go ahead with it. The way I see it is, the PTO is here to help the students grow and receive the best education possible. What better way to do this than by allowing the parents to be educated about the people that make those decisions?
You are definitly right about 99% never going to a meeting! I try to attend every monthly board meeting. How else are you going to know what is happening. I would like to run myself, but my husband is not to thrilled with that idea! We still have one more little one not in school yet, so I will wait a couple more years. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I am not a lawyer but . . . . (I'm going to start abbreviating that ANAL! what do you think?) I think meet the candidate nights do not have an effect on 501(c)(3) if you are not endorsing a candidate. Also think that encouraging participation would be great. You may be able to organize it outside the realm of PTO and send flyers home through backpacks. Try getting the local newspapers to put a notice in the public announcement section for free!

Good luck. Hope the people who are voted in are doing it for the right reasons.

Tamilyn,
I organized a public forum for school board candidates a couple of years ago through a group we called TEST (three elementary schools together). The group is loosely made up of mostly officers of the schools and we get together to do a function when the feeling moves us. Anyway, all I did was reserve our Middle School, invite the candidates and the local newpaper (they didn't come), advertise with a flyer to the whole school district and find a moderator. The moderator, a friend of mine and at the time the current PTA president, and I decided on the questions. We asked the same question of each candidate and gave them 3 minutes to answer. Afterwards someone told me that the League of Women voters could have run it and that they have some sort of reference guide that we could have used. I thought it was very un-biased and of the couple of dozen people that turned out seemed to think it was worthwhile.
The school board is an extremely important group and since 99% of the population never goes to a school board meeting, the people that we choose to represent us should be the candidate that best reflects our views. How else do you know what those views are without a forum like that? good luck!