I agree with the others - this is absurd. However, I expect you are hoping for a conflict-free way to resolve it.
** Definitely enlist your school's support.
** Do you have bylaws? Check them for "president's duties" and elections/nominations committee. It's a fairly common practice that the president "Serves as ex-officio member on all committees except Nomination Committee..."
** Present the idea of a nominations committee/election as if it's just routine (which it should be). And -helpfully - have some best practices available.
"Well, it's time to think about officers for next year. So we'll need a nominations committee. Since we haven't done this in awhile, we've scouted out some of the common best practice...."
If you can set the foundation for a good committee and you've got people right there, ready to volunteer, it may be much harder for her to simply take control of the process.
Note - if you do have bylaws, it might give the president power to appoint the committee.
I never heard of that one in my 20 years of dealing with parent groups. What happened to the election process? How did SHE get in there? I agree your parents need to get in there and vote for who they want for next year. Start bringing it up at the meetings. Ask if anyone wants to run for any positions and get ballots going. Bringing it up in a meeting it should go into the minutes. That is sad.
The parents, the teachers, the administration....by-laws or not enough people put together could very well say "that's nice, but we are having an election."
You bet your gonna be stepping on her toes and you bet she will be offended but this gal (me ) feels she has offended an enitire school with her lack of trust in allowing others to be apart of this organization.
"I'll pick the next president"....I see a red flag on that statement.
Must have an election. Check your by-laws. Where's the principal? We don't have membership fees so each parent who has a child in the school gets a vote. Since you do have fees then each 'paying' parent has a vote. Good thing your current pres. is going, not a good way to run the group. I agree with Luv, go over her head. Get as much back up as possible & don't be afraid to challenge her...the pto belongs to everyone, not just her.Good luck.
Is there a meeting coming up soon? Rally the parents and bring up the topic at the meeting. Have someone put forth that they feel the members should select the new officers and ask for a show of hands as to who agrees. Basically, it would be the parents jsut going right over her.