Hello Ernestine,

Bylaws and determination of your status are important. Also important is a mission statement aka "what the school would like you to do" I'd set up a meeting to talk to the principal and ask. These can help determine how you craft your bylaws and the type of status you might need or have to seek. The more money you handle may dictate your desire to seek a certain status.

From what I've read between the lines, it MAY be the school may be telling you, they don't want or need stuff as much as they want people supporting their mission. It you can build your group, then you'll be able to take on whatever they need.

The way you support the schools miission is to build confidence with them though smaller successes. It may be time to consider, "am I confident we can be successful in all we want to do?" Take on the things you know you can be successful with to build confidence.

Feel free to publish your successes. Some people might call this bragging, but when done correctly, it's not bragging, it's motivating.

You need to do this methodically.

You're starting " in the hole" having lost some PTO board members.

To be a success, you'll have to be outwardly positive and keep some of the worries to yourself, or share them privately and individually with people that can hold them in confidence. You want the face of the PTO to be one without too many worries. You are there to take away some of the worries from the school.

I'm thinking it may be possible that the idea of telling you you need to spend all you money by the end of the year may be a way of telling you you need to not focus on building a war chest. The idea of "money is only important so that we can do the things we need to do", way be what others are thinking.

What I hope you most get out of reading my post is that you take all you know and look at things five to ten different ways. You're going to need to communicate frequently and thoroughly to figure out how to bring your organization together.

Well, there are many questions that need to be asked to help us get a better picture, but I am sure we can provide some ideas that will be useful.

First question, is your PTO an independant organization? Do you have 501(C)3 status?

Next, does your group have a set of Bylaws?

These are two of, IMO, the most important things for a PTO. If you are not independant I would recommend becoming so. If you do not have a set of Bylaws you need some, even if you just copy, word for word, the examples prrovided on this site.

The fact that the Principal provided you a small room is great. It shows that he/she thinks that your group is at least somewhat important.

Next, who is it that is telling you that you are not allowed to purchase anything for the school? If it is the Principal you may want to ask him/her where that is indicated. If it is the Superintendant of Schools then you may want to talk with your town's School Committee.

Not being able to purchase anything for the school is totally against the grain of what a PTO does. IMO, here is almost no reason why a Principal and/or town/Superintendant would not want a PTO to be supporting a school in this way.

Now for the ways to make your group better...

First you need to increase active membership. This is, for many groups, the most difficult thing. Kindergarten parents (if you are an elementary) is often the best place to start. But with such a small percentage of participation you need to reach out to the entire parent/staff base and see what you can get.

One of the best ways is to try to hold that one big event between now and the end of the year. It could be anything. For example, between now and the end of the year my group will be having a February party (effectively Valentine's dance), with a DJ, bake sale, free raffle prizes, a picture area, etc.; a free family night for each grade (BINGO for K through 2, and "Are you smarter than a 3rd/4th Grader" for 3rd and 4th). a Golf Tournament fundraiser, a third roller-skating party, two poker torunament fundraisers, two more Book Fairs, a Family BBQ and the end of the year Field Day.

My recommendation would be to pick one, such as Field Day or a Dance type event. Promote the heck out of it. Have handouts promoting getting involved. Maybe even have it where anyone who fills out an involvement form gets twenty free raffle tickets for the free raffle prizes.

When the parents see your group doing great things like this they'll want to get involved as well.

Next is communication. IMO this is one of the most important things that any group can do. I personally take on both the monthly newsletter and the PTO website as I feel it is that important. You can start off small, with maybe a one page newsletter. Your President should have a little paragraph at the beginning explaining what is going on or promoting involvement. Here's a couple of mine from some of the newsletters that I have already had go out this school year...

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Welcome to our first issue of the "school name" Herald for the 2007 – 2008 school year. First off, on behalf of the "school name" Elementary PTO I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all parents, guardians, students and staff back for the new school year. For those new to "school name", let me tell you a little bit about us. The Parent–Teacher Organization is a non-profit group consisting of All parents or guardians of children attending "school name", as well as each member of the professional staff.

Our mission is to promote open communication and understanding between parents and staff, and we are dedicated to enhancing and maximizing the educational experience of every child while aiding them in achieving their highest potential.

We hold our meetings on the second Tuesday of every month at 7 PM in the school cafeteria, at which we discuss events, fundraisers and enrichments for the upcoming year. We encourage everyone to become involved in any way that you can. I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting on October 9th.

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Well the New Year is here and it’s a time when many make resolutions to start the year off right. Studies show that direct parental involvement at the school itself directly reflects your child’s performance and there is truly no better resolution than that. I invite each of you to become more involved in your child’s education. To find out how, check out the “Join the PTO” section of the PTO website.

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Well, that's all I have time for right now.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

PresidentJim

I am the secretary at a new school, In Cleveland Ohio. This is the second school year of operation.

As of Dec. right before x-mas break the Teacher that was the coordinator for PTO quit. ( forced out,by principle constant complaining)
She really didn't want to be part of PTO and she let us know at every meeting.
After the break the Treasurer quit for no good reason.
Now it is just myself and the vice president who is now President, to figure out how to keep PTO going with our 3 1/2 parents and 1 1/2 teachers
We can not purchase anything for the school (I mean nothing)
We need a decent library, dictionaries, resourse books, it's just really sad.
I always thought that was one of the reasons that PTO's was started to help provide stuff for schools, gym mats to paint.

So what are we fundraising for? At this point we don't even know.

We don't know how to file taxes, nor when to file them. We were told that
we had to spend all monies before the end of the school year, we don't know how true that is.
We have very little support from teachers, they are not very forth coming with anything. The fianace committee wants all of our activites ahead of time
like a month or two, but they can't even meet their own deadline as their scheduled events.

Since sll of this we've still managed to bet out PTO board up and stuff on it,
the principal gave us a small room for our office we've put a small file cabinet
plain cabinet and now the principal gave us a couple of books shelves
(we use these for the clothing drive we have going)
We are now planning to have a small store for children afterschool to make purchases for friendship day(I think this will work)

We have more problems but these are big forus
Can anyone help this very small, very new and exhausted PTO
Because right now 2 of us will not be back next year.