The Principal is the captain of the ship. If any little thing goes wrong, s/he is the person who will hear all about it first, regardless of the issue, and in my opinion, is responsible for almost everything that goes on in the school.

Depending on the level of PTO activity in your school, the principal's insistence at reviewing every message first would create a huge bottle-neck. And, his/her time is better spent on administrative and curriculum issues, not on reviewing PTO flyers.

Provided that ground rules are set early in the year (such as no distribution of promotional materials for a business), PTO officers can and should be given the trust to monitor the content and style of the communications themselves.

Our Principal wants me to email her first, anything that goes to the teachers....I don't think that is right. I send out emails to everyone (teachers) including the principal at the same time, why should I send it to her first? Does anyone think that is strange?

We have the same issue at our school - I figured it was normal. I love the idea of FB and Twitter, thanks guys! We did just start an email group that the parents can sign up for - the principal said that we could post what we wanted there because it was voluntary for parents to sign up and it was strictly a PTO thing - I think the differentiation is that it doesn't come home from school. If you are worried about upsetting the principal, ask! I bet he'd appreciate it. Good luck!

Our email communications are first sent to the principal for her review, then out to the teachers to email to their students' parents.

I was never asked to do that, but if you think about it the principal is held responsible for anything that goes home to parents. I wouldn't want her to be "in the dark" if a parent opened their email before the principal got a chance to read it. Likewise, the teachers get it first as well.

But I'm fortunate in that she usually looks at my communications pretty quickly and generally doesn't have a problem with them. Although she has pointed out an incorrect date or something I forgot to include that I appreciated the extra set of eyes.

We too must run everything past our principal that we want to send home with students. I think that makes a lot of sense, because a parent should assume that anything coming home with their student has been 'approved' at some level. Sign up forms for Little League, for example, are approved by the district office. We would never get something like a car was coupon in our student's backpacks. They've tried . . . but have been told, "no."

Also, the school lets us make copies on the school machine, so I kinda consider it official school business at that point.

However, once we have the parent signed up for our email distribution list, we can send them stuff directly. We usually send an email once a month with meeting summaries and reminders of upcoming events. We cc the principal, staff, teachers, District Superintendent and District Community Relations person. We are very careful to make these communications professional (no typos, spelling errors, etc.)

That seems to work for our PTO.