First off, I have to say this ( a pet peeve). It is a PTO Parent Teacher org, meaning a parent of a student in the school or a teacher from the school. If you do not have a child you are not welcome and certainly can not speak at the meeting unless invited as a guest speaker. This is what we follow.
With that said, I am in my 3rd year as pres and the meetings are going pretty well. Each year I make some changes and if they work I keep to them. Always have an agenda, I make it up with stuff I want to discuss, I tell everyone to call or drop me a note ahead of time if they want to be on the agenda and I add anything last minute if it comes up in the executive board meeting. I start off the meeting announcing that we are trying to keep the meeting to an hour (or 1 1/2 hours) depending on the length of the agenda. I also announce that this in no way should stop anyone from asking questions or asking for clarification of items. If something can not be solved or answered we deal with it after the meeting or at the next meeting.
We have had some in the past that carry on but mostly we are under control. Just remember, we are all here for the kids.
Boy oh boy is this president stuff ever tough. What I need is an article on "How to run a meeting". We have had pretty much the same group of people every year as officers and the people who don't even have children in the school anymore sometimes over power the officers and end up running the meeting. What do you do with that?
I believe that these people have alot of experience where a PTO is concerned, but I think that officers need to take their place and do the jobs they need to do. Our By-Laws are old so we are discussing new ones, however it is hard to run a proper meeting when you've never done it before.
Our biggest fundraiser is coming up soon, a carnival, and things are getting tense. People are to dependant on former people (who want to be done with the responsibility) that have run the carnival and things seem to be tumbling over each other. How do I get control? Any suggestions? Tough one huh!
