I am so sorry disbanning is such a problem for you. Just a thought though. Even though our bylaws indicate that we assume our elected positions in May the treasurer retains their duties until the end of the fiscal year, which for us in June 30th. Unfortunately, you may not see your financial material until then. I would go beyond the board of directors for your state and go right to the top for help on this. Find out if there is any way to freeze the account in the mean time. Best Wishes!

EMONTE: HELP if you can.We're still working on this change over..We were sworn in the end of April,,The x Pres of the pta still will not hand over any bookwork,paperwork,or the checkbook..it is sooooooooooo childish what's going on at our school.And the problem is the local pta rep was also on the board this year..so her and the x are quite close, she heard of someone asking us to change and decided she's not giving us anything. Not to mention,she's spending large sums of money from our budget, thats not being voted on. I didn't take this position to go through this childish behavior. I don't get it. But were going to go through with it and see what happens any advice...because our bylaws are lengthy and with someone from the pta assoc., involved its going to get nasty. we need help.

I guess I could see it taking a lot of time if it was very controversial at your school. For us, pretty much the whole group was for the change and we did it in 2 meetings. The state PTA people wanted to add all kinds of steps that weren't in the bylaws and we didn't do them. We just followed the bylaws. In the end, when we voted something like 34-2 to make the switch it was over.

BocketyDee - I'm am happy to hear that your disbanment went smooth. We had all kinds of problems with ours, even where we consulted an attorney. He is the one that stated, "just follow what your by-laws state." Every time someone local would call us on something and then call in the State Reps. Finally, we did figure out that it was there understanding vs. our understanding.....we finally started asking the State Reps to give it to us in writing. I also want to point out, that our conflicts came from local past officer(s) who was totally against us switching to a PTO. A couple showed us a local lawsuit of a sports team who lost due to not following there By-Laws. We have heard the phrase "You could be sued....." by some local people more than once. It is very disheartening because we are all volunteers just trying to keep afloat for our school children. We do not have people "knocking down the door" for Executive Board positions. For everyone else out there reading this, the State and National PTA DID NOT threaten us in any way for disbanment. They weren't happy; but as you said they must let us go. PTA is a good organization, for All children. We are a very small school and with membership decreasing and National and State dues constantly increasing we can't afford to stay with them and we must maintain for our school children. This website has been a Godsend to our unit - Thanks!

BrocketyDee.....very interesting. As you can see from my other postings..I'm Illinois and we really want out of the pta. So there has been alot of good advice.I just don't want all the headaches it seems to be to get out. Your way sounds very easy, As of May,our board takes over the pta and would like to give the 30 day notice to the pta rep,who will be there anyway,sence somehow she ended up on the old board,,,figure that one out. Anyway,if we gave the notice in May, and had our voting in April,we have to have 2/3rds too. Is it possible to sign the check(funds) over to our principal say to use as a childrens fund,and then she would sign it back over to us when we officially become a pto.I read this idea some school did somewhere in one of these discussion forms. I would really like to have this settled for Aug. thanks Illinois.

EMonte - Our experience wasn't nearly as difficult as yours. Our bylaws didn't require us to have a PTA rep. speak and we didn't do that. We did announce that we would be voting on the change (we announced it in our newsletter that goes to every home in the school) and then we voted at the next meeting. We got a 2/3rds vote of the members in attendance and then over the next month we made sure to spend down our $$.

Really what could the PTA do if we want to be a PTO but didn't do everything exactly right? Make us be a PTA? I don't think so. I'd bet that when the dues stop going in you pretty much become a PTO anyway. I'd say it is smart to follow what the bylaws say, but you don't need a secret decoder ring to get out of the PTA. If you want out, you can get out.