"Parent-Teacher Organization/PTO" is generic label given to any of the various forms of a locally-defined group of parents with the mission to support a school. PTO's are independent from one another and are not held accountable to any overriding authority, including the school adminstration and Board of Education (ususally).
The creation of a PTO is dependent on the enthusiasm of your parents and the partnership of your school's administration. A new PTO should create a mission statement and bylaws, elect officers, define a budget, execute fundraising activities and other projects in accordance with its mission, communicate with its members, and work as a team with the principal and teachers.
You can create a PTO with as many or as few members as are interested.
While there are no "official" oversite organizations for a PTO (in contrast to PTA), you might consider registering your PTO as a non-profit organizaiton with the IRS. This step has many advantages (see other posts), but does require your PTO to prepare annual reporting to the IRS.
PTA is a registered and trademarked name- you cannot use it unless you are legally one. You can ckout their national website at www.pta.org
to find more infromation you can also access your state PTA to get information about becoming a PTA. PTA are a child advococy agency the largest in the nation. We have a strong voice in legislation. PTA also offers various forms of training and offers various ways to get information. PTO's from what I understand are individual units with no National or state leaders/organization. PTA's pay dues to national PTA and their state PTA and that covers everything for them as far as insurance, bonding of officers,resources for information about PTA or programs &/or speakers. Each year the PTA pres of each unit gets NAtional Manual and a State Nanual which has everything in it from Moneymatters to advertising, to legal issues, to lobby issues..When anyone has a question you can get a direct answer within an hour.
Hi Everyone,
I want to thank everyone who wrote me about our question on voting in our organization. Your information will be very helpful.
As we parents make our way through this maze of legal steps and emotion while developing a viable PTO/PTA that can work with the school as Tim correctly points out is an important step, we, also want to be a partner with the faculty and principal in educating our children rather than just being a silent membership. Our Board of Education and Central Administration supports these efforts, and now its up to us as parents to make this happen. So---after your wonderful answers about voting, can you help us by giving addional answers to the following quesions.
" Are there federal or state law governing
PTO,PTA? If so can you give us the primary source? Do there have to be so many parents in the organization before we can call it a PTO/ PTC?"
