Lisa - the school that I am at now is new this year (opened September, 2002 - who is sick of hearing me say this?). We are the melding of students from 4 schools in our district. Prior to making any decisions we had meetings beginning in April of 2002 to which parents from all 4 schools were invited. During the early meetings we looked into both PTA and PTO. It's the money, honey! We can still do everything we want to do, and then some, because #1 we don't HAVE to charge dues which I think would be a deterent in our situation. We opted not to charge dues. If we were a PTA, it is my understanding that we would have to charge dues, have card carrying members, restrict voting, etc. We do not want to discourage anyone from volunteering - much to the contrary, we want as much input as possible and it seems to be working. We had a general meeting last night with 60 people including 15 teachers and the principal in attendance. Now, all meetings aren't that strong, but we have had good turnout and we have looked into every single suggestion that has come from a member. I don't know that you have that kind of flexibility with PTA.
One more thing - just read the hassles that people go through when they want to disband their PTA. Think of it this way - if you choose to go PTO and then want to change, you won't have that problem. If you start out PTA and then want to change to PTO . . . . . you can fill in the blanks for yourself.
Good luck as you work to reach this difficult decision.
One more thing - NPN is a wonderful resource and opportunity to obtain group insurance rates, etc.
Lisa, we looked into it too and its the money. We don't raise that much and to spend so much of it on dues doesn't make sense for us, maybe it does for you.
Well Lisa, I can only speak from what I know. Our school is K-8 and we are very small.. 140 students. My sister is the Prez our her sons PTA. I think that for smaller schools, the PTO is better because we don't have all of the same issues of a lager big city school.
I like the fact that the PTO allows you to be more "your" school oriented. I have found this to work well for us. We are going to be joining the NPN.
I hope this helps. Amy
Hello everyone!
Let me give you just a brief run down on my situation before I ask any questions. Currently our elemantary school(only k-3),in conjunction with another school has a PTA. We are in the process of building a new school which will be k-6.
We have been doing some research on both groups. My question to you is: Other than having the indiviual "freedom", why would we want to form a PTO instead of a PTA?
