One place to start is the bylaws. Would you be up for putting together a group and volunteering to put the bylaws together? The reason I suggest this as a first step is it will help bring some kind of organization and procedures to your group so that everyone knows what is supposed to be happening. If you have a bylaws group working on how things are supposed to run, that focuses the executive board on what should and shouldn't be happening.
If you need help getting started with bylaws, we have lots of resources for that, including:
In the meantime, if the situation with the president is critical, then someone needs to step up and address it. Not knowing your community, I can't really recommend the best approach, other than to offer a suggestion: Can you go to one of the board members and suggest that the board member take it up with the principal -- if the PTO president's behavior is interfering with PTO business or putting anyone in harm's way -- then the school principal needs to know.
We have a situation with our current PTO president...she has been in office for the last 4 years and things have been spiraling out of control. There are no established bylaws and no real job description for our officers...she feels her role as president is to dictate to the others what they need to do, how to do it, etc. Voicing your opinion or thoughts is never allowed and if you do proceed with bringing up your ideas, you are quickly shut down without even a moment of consideration. The treasurer doesn't even know what money is coming in and going out most of the time as she is very controlled over this aspect as well.
We continue to do the same events every year and we have lost a large amount of parent/volunteer/teacher support. The biggest issue is that she will show up to the PTO sponsored events at the school(s) and she has been drinking or she just puts it in a concealed container and drinks during the event(s). All of the officers are aware of this and have witnessed it on numerous occasions. She basically has no one that she reports to and is not willing to step down from her position. Any suggestions on how we handle this situation without putting a bad name to our PTO and not being able to move forward without having this bad shadow over us?
