Nope not kidding. I love to have the agenda ready for the President with hot topics highlighted and we use an egg timer for 3 minutes. Parents used to get upset but when simply said "We need to get home to our families too!" members began to remember we are parents too! The best time was right after I had a baby and I could say "Tick Tock! The baby needs to eat at 7:00 and I need to be there!" Of course that isn't for everyone but you can change it to fit.
If you know something is going to take sometime to work out or decide upon, hold a special "coffee talk time" or meeting at the park to let kiddos play and parents talk, no voting, just talk. Bring the ones that can't attend up to speed. Can you do an online chat? E-mail conserns? Sounds easy but if it's important enough to table and talk at more length when everyone can really just talk, I bet you will see better choices and thoughts will be made and shared.
mi3sons..I have a question. How many board members do you have?? We only have 4 in our group. If the board "hashes things out" how do you get the concensus of the general assembly?? What I mean is..if you're looking to spend some money and you get 10 ideas on what to spend the money on....does the board decide which items are voted on for spending?? Then you just get the approval from the general assembly to do the purchase?? If so, why have a meeting. The board is already making the decisions. In our school we did a concensus last year to see what things parents wanted to see in the school. The board sat with the Principal and took out the items that we knew couldn't be purchased (a 2nd floor bathroom isn't gonna get funded by our PTO) but any other legitimate ideas were presented before the assembly for discussion. We do our best to keep meetings short and concise but I think it's fair in the interest of the school and the parents to ensure all ideas are presented to everyone. If all I'm asking them to do is vote, I don't really need them there. It's their PTO as much as mine.....I just oversee the group.
I don't mean to be harsh and I'm sorry if I misenterpreted how your group runs.
Having board meetings seemed to help us. We hash things out there and just present them for a vote basically. Anything that needs a lot of discussion, we ask whoever brought it up to get details to the board and we will discuss it.
I have an agenda and go from topic to topic as quickly as possible. (If you take a breath, I will move on ) The meetings used to last about 1 1/2 hours, now we are out in about 40 minutes. The principal loves me and my co-president!
Only discuss things that have been fleshed out and need to be voted on. For items that need to be researched more, narrowed down, etc subcommittee those to a group and then they can present at a future meeting. Otherwise, you'll end up debating something the entire time that really has not been thought out.
) The meetings used to last about 1 1/2 hours, now we are out in about 40 minutes. The principal loves me and my co-president! 
