You have a lot more going on here than just the takeover of your PTO. Unfortunately, faculty as it's defined in a dictionary would apply to university teaching staff. From all of the different sources I have accessed, each site has included a definition. Your school, district and PTO have also not defined it. Your bylaws don't prevent any of what is happening now unfortunately.
There are several things you can do. One is talk with your principal. I know it doesn't seem like a terrific solution but a principal can make or break you. They can refuse to help circulate your materials, give you a place to meet, they can make life VERY difficult for you. It is in your best interest to try and play nice, even if it seems to be the schoolyard bully. If that doesn't work, you can go over their head (but again, keep in mind that they can make life unbearable for your group) or you can try to play the same game. Stack the membership. Start approaching parents and encouraging them to join. Unfortunately, you can't prove they're wrong about "faculty" and you can't prove you're right. There are many trains of thought and they can all be correct and since your bylaws are gray, no one will win this argument.
If the hostile takeover doesn't happen, revise the bylaws post-haste. Include the PTO's definition of faculty, members in good standing for x amount of time may vote in election/run or hold an office and/or officers must be parents.
I don't envy your situation but you have a hard time ahead of you no matter what direction you take.

Scottmam#1. I cannot refer to our student handbook for a definition. It does not have that definition in it. Additionally, the student handbook is put out by the district. The PTO is a seperate 501c3 organization. And while both "should" define the word the same they may not. My feelings are that words DO have specific actual definitions. As in definitions that we can look up in the dictionary. I believe our Principal is trying to define this for his own reasons.

Michelle. Yes I did not give a lot of info in the first post. The reason was to try NOT to infuence the responses with my opinions. I was simply trying to ask what is the "normal" definition of "faculty". If I was not clear in how I asked the question, I appologize.

My understanding is that faculty is generally the teachers or certified teaching staff. If faculty was meant to indicate everyone at the school then the sentence in the bylaws is redundant. The sentence states...

"Membership in this organization shall be made available to any parent, guardian, or custodian of children attending ********* School, or any member of the faculty or administrative staff of ********* School."

I do not believe "any member of the faculty" means "any paid school employee". If you will substitute "teacher" where it says "any member of the faculty" the sentence still makes perfect sense. As in... "...any teacher or administrator...". If, however, as Scottmom#1 suggests, you read it as "ANY paid employee" it becomes redundant... "... ANY paid employee or administrator..." since administrators fall into the "ANY paid employee" category. Not to say that redundancies don't happen. But you don't usually see them in these types of documents.

There is nothing in the bylaws about who can or cannot hold specific positions or whether a position cannot be held by a teacher or by a parent, etc. The only exception is the following line that states that the Principal and a teacher rep must be on the executive board...

"The Executive Board shall consist of the officers of **********, chairpersons of standing committees, the principal of ******* School, and a teacher representative appointed by the principal."

As far as the "officers" nothing in the bylaws prevents them from being ALL teachers or all school employees. (I tried to address this a few times suggesting that we needed to revise the bylaws and make them more specific but no one else seemed to think it was important.)

I do believe this is becoming a hostile takeover. Let me tell you why. Our principal has been hostile to and tried to keep parents out of many things in the past. Our Site council is basically non-existant. He tells it what to do and often keeps important information from it. Many times meetings are cancelled because he doesn't want to have one that month. A couple weeks after this school year started we lost a teacher. The district moved the teacher to another school. I learned of this about three days before it happened. The kids in the class weren't told until the day they were moved into other classes. There was never a letter about it to their parents. Our Principal had known for a month or so. Also, earlier this year we got an afterschool reading program. After the program was up and running he wanted the PTO to buy snacks for it. No big deal there right? Actually his request for snacks was the first time we learned of the programs existance. When I asked him about the program his response was "Your kids aren't in it so you don't have a need to know". Excuse me. I am on the site council and an officer of the PTO that he wants to pay for it. I think I DO have a need to know. In December the PTO lost the room we had at the school. We were never officially told. They just moved a bunch of stuff in and it became a preschool. We had to go ask the receptionist in the office to find out what was going on. This spring we postponed our book fair because we were having trouble getting volunteers and we didn't know if we were going to have a place to hold it. One of our board members, a teacher, said she wanted to try to resurrect it. She did. But she was told that since she was doing it it was now a school event and the PTO was out of it. We couldn't get any help and suddenly the teachers were falling all over themselves to help her. When we had our last Honors Assembly the parents were never notified or invited. The kids just brought the certificates home one day. Just about the time this school year started we had three officers resign. We have only been able to replace one. Teachers as well as parents have refused to accept a board position. Add all this to the fact that now we have a bunch of teacher aides that I'm still not sure can even be members according to the bylaws and a Principal who was never around and would never help with anything who is now constantly into everything. A principal who keeps asking about the bylaws and I do think we are seeing a hostile takeover. (And the bylaws are available at every meeting.)

By the way, I checked the membership count last night. Here's what we have right now...

Parents 12
School staff 21

I did not really intend for this to be a long post. And if I come across as upset about this it's because I am. Not because I want to exclude anyone. But, because I have a principal that has been anti-PTO and anti-parent for quite some time. He has been absent from almost everything we have done the last three years(that I've been at the school) and now he wants to be in everything.(And why when he's supposed to be retiring at the end of this school year.) We have a bunch of school employees who would never done anything before that just joined and want to be involved in the elections and I'm not convinced can even be members according to our bylaws.

Now here's something else. Early this year the district held a meeting for all the PTOs, PTAs, etc. The superintendent said she didn't want teachers to be treasurers. She didn't want the school to control the PTO funds. She wanted these funds kept totally seperate from student council and other school funds. Which I agree with her completely. Now our bylaws call for two signers on our checks. We have three signers set up on the account. But my understanding from that meeting was more than "teachers can't be treasurers". It was that parents need to be in control of the PTOs and their funds. Not the school.

We'll see what happens...

I would suggest nicely, professionally asking the principal and these new members what's going on. You'd love to have their help/participation, and you want to make sure everyone is on the same page. Why guess at what the principal is doing?

This election issue -- if there's a gray area in your bylaws, discuss that gray area and make it not gray -- is a symptom of a larger problem. It's not the fundamental problem. If you somehow box these staffers out (as it sounds like you want to do), you'll still be a group at odds with its principal and with very little membership.

Talk it out.

Tim

If you take the definition of faculty literally than the teachers at your school are also not faculty because the definition of faculty refers to an educator who works in a college/university. Many institutions will define who the faculy will consist of and this varies from location, school or otherwise and will be found in a handbook etc.
As for the possible hostile takeover of your PTO, you didn't give the entire story in your original post.
What do your bylaws say about who can hold a board position? Is there anything about a specific time to have held a membership, attended x number of meetings, anything? I need more background.
As for ScottMom, I agree, you are coming across as looking for someone to agree with you instead of opinions and it's coming across hostile. We'll help you if you want help but if you are just looking for affirmation, that may not happen...

[ 04-21-2005, 01:27 AM: Message edited by: Michelle B ]

Then refer to your student handbook because our clearly defines a faculty member as any person with a paid position in the school, not necessarily a teaching position. Our administration is considered to be separate in some cases because they are held to higher standards. Most definately if you want clarification of bylaws, then ask your group not someone who is aparently not telling you what you want to hear from their own experience.

Michelle,

No. The bylaws do NOT say "any paid employee". I was quoting the reply from Scottmom#1. Our bylaws say EXACTLY what I put in the first post. And EVERY definition of "faculty" that I can find indicates it is the teaching staff, not "ANY employee". And YES, I am talking about holding an office.

We have what I feel is a serious problem with our Principal and our upcoming election for next years officers. Let me explain...

Our Principal has had almost no interest in participating in the PTO for a long time. Last year he only attended two PTO meetings. The year before was about the same. This year he did not attend a single meeting until February. He actually did not even join the PTO (pay his dues) this year until the day of the February meeting. He is supposed to be a member per our bylaws yet he has not participated in hardly anything. And most of the time has worked against the PTO. Now however he wants to be involved in EVERYTHING. Or maybe CONTROL everything would be a better term. (The dues, by the way, are $2.00 for teachers and $5.00 for families.)

Last night we had our April meeting. As per our bylaws, we created the elections committee to get nominations for our elections next month. We have had a small PTO. Up until recently we only had about 20 total members in a school of almost 600 students. About three weeks ago we recieved about a dozen more membership applications. Not in our mailbox, but all together in one envelope from the office. Almost all of these were aides. When we formed the elections committee several of these aides wanted to be on the committee. Now I'm not trying to prevent anyone from joining our PTO. But, according to my understanding of the bylaws, these aides cannot be members of the PTO unless they join as parents. And many can't do that because they DON'T have kids at the school.

Some of us believe that this is an orchestrated move by the Principal to take total control of the PTO's money. Often times he does not ask about the PTO funding various things. He simply hands one of us the receipts and wants reimbursed. Lately we have said no a couple times because it was for items that were not budgeted and that we felt the PTO should not be paying for. Needless to say he was not happy.

So now, he wants to be totally involved. And we suddenly have all these new members that are NOT teachers and are NOT parents of students. But they all agree with him on everything. And some of us believe that he is setting up these new aides, who have just joined and have never done anything to support the PTO, to become the new board. In essence, he would be setting up a "puppet" board.

Our bylaws do not say that teachers cannot be on the board. But the district superintendent has said that the treasurer cannot be a teacher. She does not want the school to be in a position that controls the money. She wants parents to control it. But some of us are convinced that is exactly what he is planning to do.

One other interesting sidenote. He is supposed to be retiring at the end of this school year. Why now, when for the past three years or more he has done almost nothing, should he want to be so involved?