You know, we did have a staff member as Treasurer one year and $17,000.00 came up missing. Now I do not believe for one minute that this particular staff member took the money, but because she was overwhelmed at school and didn't have time to properly count the money, she would take it home and give 1/2 to the President to take home. Plus the Teachers/Staff counting the money in the classrooms and money sitting on Principals desk. It was very unorganized - and I know it depends on the type of person you get. At our meeting the other night with the Teachers one Teacher stood up and said the best run board was run BY a Teacher. However, this Teacher counted money in the workroom by herself and would meet in the principals office to decide what to do with the money. It was never brought up to the board nor the parents because nobody knew any better at that time.

We did propose to amend the bylaws but the Teachers are fighting this bigtime! They feel they are being discriminated against and of course the principal is fueiling the fire because he is the one asking them to run. The Teachers were even calling parents and telling them that PTO was trying to keep them from voting when that was not the case. We only were restricting the 5 elected positions to parents and creating 5 new positions just for Teachers/Staff.

It all revolves around the Principal and what he is doing at this point. We have even considered pulling from the school and doing it outside of the school and just donate money. Has anyone ever done this before?

At your next meeting I'd be sure to bring up the points you just made, so that they'd understand that the conflict of interest would not be in their best interest.

How involved are the parents in your PTO? If you get enough of a following, you could move to amend the bylaws, then make sure when you go to amend them that it's stacked to be beneficial for the kids' best interests. Once it's amended, there are more parents than teachers, so it'd be hard for them to change it back. Ideally you wouldn't have to resort to this, because we all would like to have the staff on our side and none of these disagreements, but in reality you have to watch out for yourselves and your kids. It looks as though some P T O members seem to think that the Ps are there to help the Ts and NOT the kids. We all like a pat on the back sometimes, but it sounds as though the teachers are getting a little caught up in themselves here.

On the $500 for Teacher Apprecition dinner - I'd be very ticked off as a parent to see that happen. Teacher's definitely deserve appreciation, but $500 for a select 10 person table would be an inappropriate use of PTO funds as far as I'm concerned.

I'm gonna sort of veer off course, I'm afraid, but I'll ask anyway. If the board is "stacked" with staff members/teachers/administrators - who is going to man all of the activities? Seriously - I know that you all will keep doing what you've been doing, but if a hypothetical school had a hypothetical PTO board comprised of teachers/staff/administrators - who would run the fundraiser? Who would be behind the counter at the hot dog dinner? How would those teachers/staff members/administrators feel about planning the teacher appreciation things that we do every year? I had an assistant principal tell me the other day that she has money allocated in "her portion" of the PTO budget that she uses for volunteer appreciation and asked for my help. Now I know that I'm one of those volunteers she plans to recognize (like that's why I do it - - - NOT!) but it made me uncomfortable to think I'd be at all involved in something like that.

Now TOTALLY off the subject - $500 raised by the kids for administrators/staff/teachers to attend a dinner? Yes - the PTO Pres and spouse were invited - but . . . . . o.k. - I'll quit now before I stick my foot so far down my throat I can't swallow my wine later.

This issue came up when our nominating committee met the last time; a substitute teacher was mentioned as an officer, and though our bylaws don't say anything about it, that person was shot down for the possibility of conflict of interest. It's led to some hurt feelings, but the NC felt it was better to err on the side of caution.

Gallen3638 - We have almost exactly the same rules as you for our Elementary PTO. Our board is large and includes Principal, VP, and 2 teacher reps. But for the 5 elected positions

Nominees must be PTO members in good standing and may not be faculty/staff of {school name} or hold a management position with the school district.

We implemented for two reasons.

1) We saw the potential for conflict. There are times an officer - especially the President - doesn't agree with the Principal and must act as the PTO's representative in negotiating a solution. Putting an employee in that situation would be difficult. Even day to day opertions could be affected.

2) Our previous principal wanted the clause because he felt that if a teacher ever ran for a PTO office, that work might interfer/overlap with her school duties.

We have had teachers as Chairpersons and sometimes the principal was concerned about how much PTO work overlapped, but it was usually seasonal or event driven so not an ongoing problem. He was concerned a teacher being a core officer - especially President - could present other problems.

Our middle school PTO has no such rule. It's a much more informal organization, much less money involved. The school nurse (also a parent) was president for a couple of years.

[ 04-03-2004, 10:43 AM: Message edited by: JHB ]