Good point. If your PTO is not a separate entity - but basically serves as a school committee or organization, then it might be different. The SCHOOL (if a public school) is a governmental body and subject to open records/open meetings acts.
But even what that means isn't crystal clear to the average user. For instance, your elected government body (School Board) has to know this stuff inside and out. It gets so crazy that a group of them might not be able to go to lunch together if it could conceiveably constitute a voting quorum and possibile business might be discussed, even informally. Naturally, your administrators and teachers don't face that kind of constraint. The PTO (if a school unit) would be even lower on the totem pole.
Can you imagine a scenario where every meeting at school (staff meetings, teacher team meetings, school clubs, the band boosters, PTO) was subject to open meetings laws that might include 30 day public notice of the event, a quorum to conduct business, and publicly posted minutes? No one could get anything done. It mostly applies to the publicly elected upper echelons like your school Board.
Also, the school can (and often does) get Open Records requests. That's a formal process of request and compliance - not just someone stopping you in the hallway. There's a designated process for your district. When an entity gets this, they often have to provide the information - if they have it.
So for instance, if a person makes an open records request of XYZ School District for a copy of the PTO bylaws, the district would probably need to comply if they have it to provide. That doesn't necessarily mean the school/district is required to have it to begin with.
Please note, I'm not saying a PTO should not share information with its members/stakeholders - just that Open Meetings/Open Records laws aren't an appropriate compliance mechanism.
Disclaimer - I work in government, so we get hit with this a lot, but I'm not an expert. It's a very complicated area.
JHB there are some PTOs that are NOT independent, and fully under the jurisdiction of the public school in all areas.Why would those (totally dependent) PTOs not be in the held to the sunshine laws?
Each case is different, most likely.
PTO's are not public/government entities, so "no", they would not be subject to Open Records/Open Meetings laws known as "Sunshine Laws". (i.e., let the sun shine on government entities; do not let them operate in the shadows.)
That being said, a few documents are public information. Anyone can ask for your 990 filing and you need to provide it.
And being a PTO, you'd want to make appropriate information available to your members such as bylaws, minutes, budgets.
