I know this is getting old but this is the first chance I have had to get back here.

They are sending home a new fund raiser today because they are short $2000 of the needed funds. We haven't found the by-laws but if this is legal the by-laws do need to be rewritten.

Thank you all for your input. The future P.T.O. boards are going to have a lot of work to rebuild the strong organization we once had. The P.T.O. does a lot of good for our school and the children. It is sad to see this project going through when the teachers don't approve of it. It is dangerous and we will need added liability insurance to go along with it. The principal is not in favor of the project either and has been informed of everything all along.

They have created a new organization. They have taken the T out of P.T.O. and just made P.O. which is what the teachers have become.

If they are spending $6,000 for the school, I would suppose (hope) that the principal is involved in this project. Does he/she know that it's moving forward without membership approval?

I agree with everyone else that this should be up for a vote. At my last school $6,000 is half of the fundraising total for the year. I couldn't have spent $600 or $60 without approval or from withdrawing it from a previously approved allocation for that purpose.

If bylaws can't be found, then that isn't an argument in their favor to do things any way they want to. Instead, they should be even more careful to try to go through some sort of very open and public approval process before moving ahead with the project.

Then, someone needs to find those bylaws or write new ones.

Unless the project is funding itself through grants and sponsors, they really should not. If the bylaws allow for this, then why even have members.

Actually, even if the project funds itself, it should have member support.

I would NOT want to be one of those parents who say it was okay to spend that money without input from everyone...yikes. Stick to your guns, if they do it once they will do it again, that money was raised as a group and it should be spent as a group. I have never heard of any board that has approval to spend that kind of money voting amongst themselves.

Thank you for your input. We are trying to find a copy of the bylaws someplace in the school. Teachers will not be involved if they are not listened to.

I second Tim. You need to check those bylaws: ours limits the board to expenditures not to exceed $100. That's enough to cover most "emergency" types of things that come up at odd times when you can't put together a meeting. Even if yours don't have a limit, the board should have the courtesy and professionalism to realize that this money was raised by the entire school and those parents should have a say in how it's spent.

Time to rewrite bylaws if it's not covered.