Before you go changing your by-laws and compromise other commuinity involvement and participation, someone needs to have the nerve to talk to this woman. You are not a child and neither is she. She should not be speaking to anyone in a belittling manner, and she should be spoken to about the way she acts. This obviously shouldn't be done in a public forum, but in person, not on the phone and in private. Someone should talk to her, hear her out for an hour if it takes and discuss why she reacts the way she does at meetings and how you can work together to make it a good relationship between the organization and her as a community member. Tell her you appreciate her wanting to participate and she has a right to do so, but she needs to know that there are many enthusiastic parents with children in the district who may take her ideas the wrong way. I wish you much luck. But again, before compromising and hastily changing by-laws to get her out, find out why she's there in the first place and try to fix it. Stand up for yourself. You'll be a better person for it!

Actually our bylaws state that our membership is open to all staff members, parents and any other community members. We actually have wonderful support from our Board of Education members, most of whom have children that are no longer in our schools.

Our meeting was last night and she did not show, thank goodness. We have also discovered in the past week that this person did not file a report with our state gaming agency after our tricky tray last year. This is causing us tons of issues and now at least we have grounds to keep her from joining now.

I agree witht the others, but do think through the repercussions and wording of any change. Do you have others (i.e., community members who aren't parents) that are active NOW in the PTO? Can teachers be members? Ours reads:

All faculty and parents or guardians of currently enrolled {school name} students are eligible to be members.

Note the word "eligible". No one is technically a member until they join.

All you need to do is have someone at the an Officers Meeting to make a motion to request to Change the By Laws to reflect that the eligibility for Membership are PARENTS / GUARDIANS of a student(s) of the school. This could then be voted on at the PTO Meeting. Once the majority rules to accept the Amendment to the by laws, that person can not become a member unless her/his child is a student at the school. Hope this helps. Let me know how it works out.

Since her child is no longer in your school, it would seem her only purpose in joining would be to make waves. What is wrong with some people? Who has the time or the energy for that?

The problem is your bylaws. You need to change them to say that only people with children in the school can be a member of the PTO.

Has anyone out there had a situation where you wanted to bar someone from joining your PTO/PTA? We have a parent we know is going to come to our first meeting and want to join, but her children are no longer in our schools. Our bylaws state that anyone from our town can join, but this was a person that was a severe disruption last year and turned a lot of members off to the point that some are never going to return. She is a very bitter woman who delights in making other people miserable. Instead of using her kmowledge from being in the schools for so long to help us as a new board, she turned it on us and used things against us. We don't want to go into this year with the same things going on. Any help would be appreciated.