You can find more information on who is to conduct a meeting in the absence of the president in Robert's Rules of Order, 10th edition, pages 436-437. Different circumstances dictate different solutions in this regard.
In our PTO, the president's responsibilities are more administrative than hands-on in nature: conduct the meetings, ensure that the bylaws are followed, give general direction to the board, appoint committees, and act in a consultative capacity with other board members and the school administration.
According to Robert's Rules, the president isn't even allowed to participate in debates/discussions during board meetings (unless they make a motion to assign a temporary chairman to take over their meeting duties so they may step down in order to participate in the discussion). On many boards, presidents sometimes aren't even allowed to vote per their by-laws except in specific circumstances (although Robert's doesn't prohibit a president from voting).
However, your by-laws should include a description of the President's duties (which may differ than those I've listed above).
The way you use the term "chairperson" is a bit vague. As dIf mentioned, normally a Chairperson is a member who steps up to be overall responsible for a specific event or committee. For example, we have out annual Back to School Ice Cream Social next week. One of our members took on the responsibility of being the "chairperson" for this event, which means that she is overall responsible. We form the committee for the event or program at one of our meetings, but the chairperson then controls meeting with them, the delegation of respinsibilities, adherance to the approved budget, etc. At the meetings the chairperson reports on the event, including things such as what has been purchased, the expected timeline for the event, various activities planned, etc. She should work with other members, such as the Volunteer Coordinator, to ensure that the event will have the required support.
dIf may be correct in that your group has a specific position titled "chairperson", which may have overall responsibility of other chairs reporting through them. If that is the case then I must admit to not being a big fan. Essentially the President should have this responsibility. If the President would desire another layer for some reason I would say the V.P. would be more appropriate than a whole different position.
Of course it may depend on what your group's Bylaws indicate.
In our group each event has a chairperson that reports to the board. Sounds like you might have a Chairperson that has all the other chairpersons report to her. Not a bad way to go--just another layer keeping the event chairperson from you directly (i.e. event person talks to chairperson who talks/raises issues to you). If she is performing those duties as I laid out below-then she (the chairperson) should be giving you the big picture of how the events are stacking up on the calendar, any concerns, requirements that may need your attention (volunteer support, budget concerns etc) managing the details of the events with the event chairperson and raising then raising those concerns to you. My sense is that doing all of that should allow the president to look at the larger group and keep her fingers a little bit into everything (programs, budgeting, planning, purchases etc.).
Our group is not as layered although we do have a VP for Operations that is supposed to keep a handle on all of the events --- it is a bit less centralized than yours.
Just what are the duties of a chairperson? I have just taken over as president of our PTO. I was treasurer last year. As I read my duties, it seems that is everything the chairperson is doing. Before I start asking question does all PTo's have a chairperson. Ours is a teacher.
