WE ARE A ELEMENTARY PTO AND OUR DUES IS COLLECTED BY OUR CENTRAL PTO SO EACH FAMILY IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM ONLY PAYS ONCE NO MATTER WHICH SCHOOLS YOUR KIDS ARE IN. THE PROBLEM IS THE OUR PRINCIPAL THINKS WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DUES BE PART OF THE MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENT BUT WITHOUT THAT CLAUSE NO ONE WOULD PAY AND THAT WOULD CAUSE A PROBLEM WITH THE OTHER PTO'S IN OUR CENTRAL PTO? WHAT TO DO? HELP PLEASE :eek: :confused:
I am also trying to come up with by-laws for our PTO. As far as I know we haven't collected dues ever, and we have no by-laws that can be found. If there is no dues. (Which in our school district I don't know if dues would be accepted). How do you determine the difference between a visitor, regular member and voting member?
I've been thinking about this and talking to another active PTO member. We would like to implement an attendance requirement linked to voting privileges. For example: we have 9 meetings a year. I would like to set the requirement that in order to vote on issues and elections, they must attend 2 meetings prior to becoming a "voting" member at the 3rd meeting. with the clause that at the beginning of the new school year if there are voting issues, they must have attended 2 meetings in the previous year in order to be able to vote in September or October.
What do you think of this? I need help on this soon. I want to present a sample set of by-laws at my May 14th meeting.
We charge $10/family per year. For that, each member family gets the school directory which is produced by the PTO and a special "note to school" notepad, plus the priceless privelege to participate and vote on PTO matters.
Having dues does not seem to be a problem for our PTO. We historically get about 80% membership. I'm sure some of those people join only to get the directory, but from what I've seen this forum, most PTO's have about 20-30 core volunteers, regardless of dues.
It's definitely legal. You can define your own membership criteria in your bylaws.
For all PTAs -- for example -- dues are a membership requirement. PTOs are ususally split on this question, some saying "all parents of children at our school" (or similar language); others using dues as a membership requirement.
we are writing our bylaws and the issue is that we said you must pay to be a member (with a clause to cover people who can't afford the dues. is this legal or not?
