I would just present the new by-laws to the general membership. Make sure that it is announced well in advance and that copies are available for people to look over both before the night of the vote and at the meeting. Take 10-15 mins to answer any questions and then take a vote. If you normally do voice votes, you may want to do a show of hands or ballot voting just to make sure counts are accurate in case it is very close. People will either accept the changes or vote them down. If the problem is just that the membership doesn't want the change to be retroactive, then have the term limit change begin with the next election. If you do a good enough job this school year, people will want you back and vote you in for a second term. then you'd be serving for THREE years. Are you ready for that?!!
Hello, I'm a new president of a PTO and boy has it been a real surprise. Our new board just finished our new by-laws. Little was changed in them but there seem to be on that has been really upset 3 or 4 PTO members.
We changed the terms from 1 year to 2 years. We thought that with doing that we looked at if as giving us stability. 1st year is truly a learning road and the 2nd year would be alot smoother. We had talked to some parents that said that they would like to be able to come to the same people year after year and didn't like all the changes. So we thought good idea lets do that. Now note we also stated, that if an office should come open, the board would pass the dues out to the remaining board members, or an special election would be held for that position. With the knowledge that that new person elected would only serve the remending of the time of the person that left. They two would have to be voted in again at the end of that person term.
Let me tell you the roof came off the house. The people that were on the old board and those that had resigned from the new board totally lost it. They said that we shouldn't have done that, they only voted us in for the 1 year and that was it. And if we wanted to do this they wanted to revote again in the spring and then the new board could come in and serve the 2 years. They wanted to know when it was retro active and they were not going to stand for this. Mind you these are the people that served lasted year, that didn't pass down anything to us, had not helped in any fund raiseing events, resigned from the board and will not even help us at all.
With all this going on, I decided to hold a special vote for the new 1 or 2 year term and let them vote on it. A part of me doesn't feel really good about this at all. Here we are, working so hard for the school, free, willing to give them 2 years of our time, we have raised 18,000.00 the frist 3 months of school and pumped it back into the school and this is what we get. Please note that last years board never shared with the members when they changed anything in the by-laws and here we are being up front and about everything and getting slammed every inch of the way.
Help, at this point I want to throw in the towel, but I love my school the children that are there and most of all giving the school want they need, but do I really have to deal with this at every meeting???? Please advise.
Being you are a PTA under NYS PTA umbrella, you need to update your by-laws every 3 years. It is an easy process and I have emailed you the info on who to contact as we are in the same PTA region.
