Ahhhh.... the dangers of posting updates at midnight from a hotel room. Our print summary will be -- as always -- more carefully done.
Looks like the reference to taking the bylaws articles one-by-one was a mistake. That was the plan right along.
On the other two points, I'd say our report was pretty darn close (with minor clarifications). The proposed bylaws change intended to take dues decisions out of the bylaws process (thus requiring 51% approval for a change rather than 67%). The final result very strongly kept any dues change at the 67% requirement. The $$ amount of dues is not in the new bylaws, but the process for changing dues now remains virtually the same as before.
On the Board question, I was wrong to say that the president would have chosen the "ten member representatives". The original proposal had the President selecting 6 "at-large" members and the Board of Directors electing the 10 "member representatives." In total, according to the original proposal, the leadership would have controlled very closely 19 of the 26 Board seats. By amending the proposal so that the ten member reps are elected by the general membership at convention, the membership made a strong statement.
Thanks for helping set things straight. Hope this is more clear.
Dear friend, thanks for the info as I could not have explained it so precisely. I have heard from the reps we sent to convention it was fairly grueling given the business that was taken care of. Thanks to all who attended and brought our voices to convention. As a side note, each PTA unit was given all the intended business well before the convention. It was each individual PTA's responsibility to present this information to their members and if sending a rep to convention the membership voted on how their rep would vote for them. Great job all!
Tim: I would like to correct a few mistakes you wrote in the current news about the National PTA Convention. First being this comment:
Biggest news from Saturday: the big bylaws revision -- which was proposed as a "take it as a whole" proposition -- will now be voted on article by article
That isn't correct. If you registered early for convention you received a copy of the proposed bylaw revisions with this note: "Due to the number of changes, a complete revision of the National PTA bylaws are being forwarded for your approval. In order to facilitate the consideration, the proposed bylaws revision Willie considered article by article with delegates being afforded the opportunity to discuss each article one at time before a final vote on adopting the entire revision is taken." That memo is dated March 28, 2001
Another statement:
This morning, the bylaws revision was passed. The membership forced two key changes to the proposal. First -- the membership insisted that dues be kept in the bylaws (requiring a 2/3 vote for a change) rather than outside the bylaws (requiring only 50% approval for a change).
That is not quite accurate. Article V Section 4 now reads 2/3 of the voting body at convention rather than majority of voting body. The idea is the same but any increase in dues will need to be presented as a resolution passing by 2/3. I don't want anyone misunderstanding your report and looking for the dues to be in the bylaws. It won't be there.
The third inaccuracy is kinda big (in my opinion anyway).
Second -- the membership insisted that the new, smaller board of directors be elected by the membership, not appointed by the president, as proposed
The proposed bylaws never called for the president to appoint the Board of Directors. The new structure called for the Board of Directors to consist of 3 officers, 7 members from the National Council of States (elected from the 64 members), 10 representatives (elected from the previous Board of Directors (this time it would have been by the nominating committee), and 6 at-large members. The 6 at-large members are the ones appointed by the president and that remained unchanged through the amendments. What did change is the 10 members will be elected at future conventions, 5 next year and 5 the following year. Also the addition of 2 Youth members who will both be appointed by the president.
It was hard to keep up with those amendments and the amendments to the amendments! Hope you enjoyed the hours and hours of meetings as much as I did. It was an exciting convention and an exciting time to be a PTA member!
