You and thousands of other PTAs will be heading for the door if the proposed dues increase ($.50 per member) passes at their national convention this month. Their members will be made to pay for national PTA's inattentiveness over their funds.

We at Platte City Middle School have just dissolved our PTA. We spent the last year as a PTO in transition and held the vote to dissolve on May 17th of this year. It is by far the best move we have ever made.
As a PTSA we were unhappy with paying dues and feeling that we got back little in return. Our board members worked hard at increasing our membership. That resulted in a large payment made to the state and national PTA of monies that could be spent on our school children right here in Platte City. Also, the politics of PTA were unacceptable to many of our members. As a PTA member, you can only take the PTA"s position on legislative matters. Not being able to have our own views is seen by many as undemocratic. The PTA is very political and we do not feel politics belongs in a non-profit organization.
We held a meeting to vote on persuing a PTO. It was unanimous. We started the new school year with a membership drive for PTO We explained the benifits to our parents and signed up over 500 members! We only recieved positive comments and questions as to why this had not been done before. Our first year as a PTO was more successful than we had hoped for.
If you would like, conntact me and I will walk you through the process. The wbsite gave us all of the information we needed to get started. I can help you deal with the state PTA when it is time to dissolve.

The first step is to start a PTO and still keep the PTA. [ as an inactive unit ] Run your new organization as the PTO. Have only officers as PTA members [ we used the same ones we had for PTO ] so you have someone to vote to dissolve when the time comes.

We wish you great success! Platte City Middle School PTO

Our school will hopefully switching organizations in the next two months. I would love to talk to another local unit working through the same issues. I'm in Lee's Summit.

Hello Im currently a PTA President wanting to know about going to PTO and was wanting to find someone close to us to maybe come and share some expereinces with PTO vs PTA. We are a small school 350 children and it seems like we are spending so much in state and National dues and so on. JUST WANTING SOME REAL ADVICE FROM AREAS AROUND US. We are in Missouri around the Independence area. If you can help I would appreciate it. Thanks