Gesh, what do you tell the teacher that has two kids attending the school? Her vote means nothing because she gets a paycheck even though she is also a parent? Many of our staff are very active with our group and are offended when they have to chose job over parent duties. The best pres. we have had was a fifth grade teacher that was single and wanted to serve! How do the other schools in your district feel about this? Would be interesting to contact all the other PTO board members and discuss the matter. THere has to be a park or church hall everyone can meet at. Unite, and let the school district board know all these schools think the same. Yes, this would be alot of work but think of the teachers that would love to be involved but their employer is telling them no........

First I want to say how thankful I am to have a forum like this to get feedback from others "in the know". I am the PTO President for a large (1200 student) year round school. We were upadating our bylaws last year and requested any information from the district they thought would be helpful. The superintendent's office sent some info over that described Community Teacher Organizations and their relationship to the school district. One of the suprising things was a section that stated the membership was limited to parents and community members ONLY. It went on to further state that staff and students were not allowed to be members. Our biggest question was what did the "T" stand for then. Our bylaws state that only Members may vote in elections of officers. Now here is the problem - do the Teachers vote at elections? The principal acknowledges that it is the district policy, not that of the PTO, but she has told the Teachers that we can "overlook " this policy if we choose to, in essence pitting the PTO and the Teachers against each other. We do not know what to do - we believe that the Teachers should be allowed to vote, but don't see how we can "overlook" this information from the district. HELP!!!!