You put together your calendar and budget at the beginning of the year...your membership at your first general meeting is supposed to adopt that. Then you have to handle the day to day operations of your parent group. Many schools only have up to three general meetings in a school year (whatever their bylaws call for). So, Executive Boards and Committees have to be formed to handle some of the decision making. I guess you could send home ballots to your members every time you want to make a decision, since very FEW OF THEM EVER SHOW UP FOR MEETINGS! It's like that at most schools, no one shows up for meetings. But, that's a lot of work and unnecessay in my opinion. Your leaders were put there for a reason. I would not alienate co-chairs by taking away votes. If you already have a difficult time getting votes, why limit that? Look at your bylaws and create standing committees and allow for co-chairs and give them a voice. As standing committees they can be a part of your Executive Committee and vote on issues when decisions have to be made and you can't wait. It's better to have 30 votes then 5 or six just from your officers all of the time. Also, if we have a big issue, we make sure we notify members at least 30 days in advance to attend, discuss and vote. Most still don't show up, but we can always count on our 68 co-chairs to attend and vote. WE feel that's a pretty good voice for our school community. (school of 387).

Our elementary PTA bylaws call for a general meeting vote on any item that costs more then $200. Under that, it can be voted by the board. Of course, the general membership votes in the budget at the October meeting so everyone has seen (it's posted for 30 days, after Sept mtg. when it's presented) it, and has agreed to the big ticket items that are in that document.

The reason I enjoyed our PTA so much was that I only remember one sneaky event in the whole 7 years I was at that school. The rest of the time was fairly harmonious with discussion on items but usually unanimous votes following. We generally compromised until a consensus was reached. We had a majority rule for any voting issue, board or general meeting but like I said, after compromising, it usually ended harmoniously.

Amazing...we are in the midst of this issue right now. I am the new president of our HSA this year and came in without holding any office prior. A few years ago, they voted to only allow board members to vote. We are a small school and had less than 30 voting members (our school is approx 500 students). I always thought this odd and with much support, I presented a motion a the last meeting to allow every parent a vote. We did make a couple of addtional requirements and have some checks/balances already in place.
1) Any $$ expenditures must first be approved by the president before they can be put up for vote. That was already in place. Up to this year, the exec board did not meet. I'm proposing we ammend that to be the exec board must approve and am also asking that regualr exec board meetings be required. (I was suprised that they had not been meeting in years past).
We are also going to require that the voter be present at the meeting when the motion is prsented in order to VOTE on the actual motion. (Our bylaws currently require the motion to be made 1 month, actual vote the next).

Who knew this was so complicated...I keep telling everyone not to get caught up in all this...keep our focus on the kids and not on the politics and personal issues....it puts much of it in perspective!

Good luck!

Unless you set guidelines as to who is eligible for '1 person, 1 vote', you will sooner or later encounter problems with this system too.

Our past bylaws stated 'majority vote', but set no guidelines as to who could vote. Picture this: an issue is up for vote (could be anything, elections, money issues, type of playground, etc.). One person wants something so off the wall that it is actually silly or damaging to the group. They bring enough friends and family to be a majority... next thing you know, you have live ducks in the classrooms...

It happened like this at our elections 3 years ago. Someone wanted to be pres. It wasn't someone who would've won under normal circumstances. They did win because they brought in enough family, friends, co-workers, etc. to be the winning side of a majority vote.

Now our bylaws state that only members in good standing may vote, one vote per person. In our case, a member in good standing is someone who has volunteered at least 20 documented hours (at home or at school), or has actively worked on a committee, or has chaired ANY committee (even a one day event). We feel that the persons most qualified to vote are the ones who actively participate in the educational process (we don't charge dues or membership fees, so this is the only way we could think of that was fair...).

We're re-writing our bylaws to democratize our process a little. Previously only our board could vote on money issues, and we had a number of co-chaired board positions which led to confusion on voting rights.

We're considering sticking with the "1 person, 1 vote" approach and making board positions a single person. But the question remains - what, other than policy, procedure, and removal of officers should the board have the right to vote on that the general membership should not?

Another school offered that all voting at their school is by a majority of members present at a published meeting, and that any vote on money issues is automatically tabled until the following meeting.

Does anyone else out there operate in this fashion? If so, I'd like to hear about the positives and negatives of such a system.