Dear Eagleprez,
I feel your pain. I too resigned my postion as President of our school's Parent Group but for different reasons. I was not seen as the "Tyrant" you claimed your organization saw you as, in fact, I resigned because I felt I was losing control of those who were supposed to be working with me. Every event we scheduled for the year took an awful turn and just after Christmas break, I decided I had had enough of dealing with them.
Most of my trouble started early in the school year when my fellow Executive Board members wanted the 4th graders in our school to elect a "Prince and Princess" of the school to ride on a PTSO sponsored float in our town "Pratiot's Parade." During our Board meeting, I had told them it was a BAD idea to continue with this as it was nothing more than a popularity contest and not something I thought the PTSO should be sponsoring. The other members waited until the meeting was over than raced to the school and started the ball rolling by making flyers and talking to the 4th graders about this BEHIND my back as President.
Several parents had called me complaining and I had to go to the school Principal to get it stopped. After that, everything I tried to do as President was met with opposition by my fellow Board Members and relations between us dissolved to the point where the Chairwoman of our school board asked to meet with us to mediate some kind of understanding amongst us. I have known the Chairwoman outside of the school on several other levels and looked forward to meeting with her. My fellow board members however, kept asking her if they could vote me out of office and would doing that "Make them Look Bad?"
The Chairwoman was very upset that these women were incapable of seeing past the end of their own noses and when I had discussed with her their idea of "Electing a Prince & Princess" she was flabbergasted. She had never heard of anything so inappropriate for an elementary school in her life.
As the year progressed, things (believe it or not) got worse. Our PTSO hosts Breakfast with Santa combined with a Winter Craft show every year for the past 12 years. Well, thanks to my "Buddies" it didn't happen this year because they "had a football game to go to" that morning. Instead, they wanted to offer the families "Pizza with Santa" the night before in our school gym. This of course was not approved by ME or the School Principal prior to them making the announcement.
Instead of Breakfast with Santa and our Annual Craft show that on averages makes a few thousand dollars for our poor little rural school, the board members went out and bought Christmas Stockings from the Dollar Tree at a $1 each (didn't look for any discounts or freebies) and then spent additional funds for stocking stuffers. These stockings cost the PTSO over $1200 and not once was I asked to approve such spending as president. What's worse is that our By-laws state that every check must have 2 authorized signatures and each of these checks to the Dollar Tree had only the Treasurers Signature.
If you think that's bad, when they got done with the stockings, they went to Target Department store and bought EVERY EMPLOYEE of the school (over 60 of them) a $25 gift card as a Christmas gift from the PTSO again without the authorization of the PTSO President. The Treasurer was also signing her own personal reimbursement checks which is not only against our By-laws, but a very bad business practise.
These women were awful and I had my fill of them. They had talked about me, lied about me, insulted me and even threatened me with physical harm. I have been a volunteer at that school for 4 years and had never seen anything so ugly before. I had begged my Principal to interveen or to simply dissolve the organization but he kept hoping things would get better, yet they never did.During our BIGGEST attended meeting of the school year, after our business was through for the evening and just prior to announcing the student music program, I took the podium and announced my resignation to a full gymnasium. I kid you not, we must have had over 1,3000 people there that night and for our tiny town, that is just about everyone with a child in K-4th.
Now I am an advocate towards change at the school. I will not run for PTSO office again but I am trying to help others run against those currently seated. Fortunately, I have the support of the teaching staff. The current board members are trying now to switch our school back to a PTA after 4 years of being an independant PTSO so we have a long battle ahead.
Jill
when walking with turkeys 
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