The secretary should be taking minutes of any board meeting. Post the minutes in a public place or give a copy to each of the members who attend the next general membership meeting. By doing this, everyone knows what your group is doing and considering. When someone asks about your meetings, you can tell them to look at the minutes.

The board meetings don't have to be closed, but unless a person is a member of the board, they don't have standing to speak. Look at Robt's Rules of Order for the speciifics. (Zimmerman's simplified book is a great resource.)

The PTO was formed and board was elected in October of last year. We did have a few meetings before we became “legal” and as I said a couple of moms spent a great deal of time getting things together to make this all happen.

Our meetings are once a month and it has been requested by parents that we keep them to an hour so we facilitate the heck out of them. What I’m going to suggest at the next meeting is that we have an additional meeting – or 2 or 3 - that just focuses on our organization structure and processes. It will be open to everyone and you can come provide input or just come and listen. I really don’t want to leave the first year without having all this in place. Maybe we can have a yearly ceremony where the old board presents the “book of rules” to the new board…. we actually could have a lot of fun with that [img]smile.gif[/img] !

We have started a few things that are bringing in money. Our big fund raiser will be a dinner dance auction that will be held in May. One of our community’s baseball organizations did this in the past and the turnout was very good… and it was very profitable. We haven’t – and won’t - spend a dime of money without approval from all members at the monthly meeting.

kamamom - basically we have monthly meetings that are open to everyone. The board is there and anyone with a child in the school who wants to attend does. We have had a good turnout at every meeting, at least by our standards, and the parents that are there participate which is great. I feel the meetings have been very positive and very interactive. We also have a pretty good list of email addresses and a PTO website so everything is posted to the site as well certain things are emailed – if we really want to get it in their face. There is basically no excuse for not knowing what is going on or for referencing a past document.

What we haven’t done is to have a “special board meeting” and I guess this is what we were trying to do… We just hadn’t done our homework to know that 1 of our bylaws says “Board of Directors shall meet as deemed necessary. These meetings shall remain open to the public with the Board of Directors having all voting rights.”

Communication was the problem – but then it’s it always . We actually hadn’t communicated anything at large. We thought we were helping the cause by getting together and creating this “going in” document. We were going to meet and then just present our ideas at the March meeting. Oh well lessons learned – with #1 being COMMUNIATE EVERYTHING even if you don’t think it’s a big deal.

I myself am not in favor of closed meetings but I can see where you might need a few. I would have a few questions. How long ago were the officers elected? Are you having meetings frequently enough to get the job done in a timely manner? Have your parents raised funds and have you started to distribute the funds without input from your members? These are some of the reasons parents find to start wondering about what is going on. We are in the same boat but, have not started any committees. People do ask when is the member meeting, aren't members supposed to vote on such and such. You learn how different people look at things and then you try to be as diplomatic as possible.

Wow. Sorry about the assumption of "she!" It's awful when assumptions make you put your foot in your mouth. Thank goodness you have a lawyer, you sound like you need one! Situations like this must make you want to say, "and THIS is what I get for trying to do the right thing!" [img]tongue.gif[/img] Is the situation that there really are no board meetings, or is it that you can have them but the public can attend and must be given open forum time? I only ask because last week we got sucked into an angry diatribe by a frustrated parent who was unfortunately venting at the wrong people at a BOE meeting. The president and super tried very hard to be diplomatic in "nipping in the bud" the inappropriate monologue, but you know how hard it can be trying to get through to someone who doesn't want to listen. Finally in the end one of the board members who knew the person on a peronal level managed to sidebar him and get him under control. But, needless to say, it wasted about 45 minutes .

I'm presuming PTO Mom and Parent are representing the unhappy faction in your situation. I'm not sure how to respond not knowing all the details. I can understand their point if they were just caught in the cross-fire of those going out and those coming in, and have a sincere desire to help but are feeling shoved aside just because they're "old-school." BUT-- if the PTO wasn't doing well in the past, I can't see how past experience would be of much help now.

It seems more like a communication problem than anything to me--it sounds rhetorical but it's true. The board needed to communicate why they were doing something, and the "others," without being nasty/sarcastic needed to explain their discomfort with the "closed" meetings. If the officers had been around the block a few times PTO-wise and were obviously more savvy to the political workings I could see the reason for claws being unsheathed, but with the board being so new, I would think the more "experienced" members in the general population could be more...diplomatic and let the newbies work their way through this mess! Let's face it, in the end it's just a tempest in a teapot!

kmamon - the example that PTO MOM of 3 used is real... and to top it off the "she" president is a "he" president. This guy has really good facilitation skills and helped to get the organization through a lot of the upfront BS. It’s funny though, one of the current perceived issues is that the meetings are now "too facilitated". Anyway that is probably another thread [img]smile.gif[/img] - a corporate man in the traditional woman's world of PTO.

I feel the need here to be clear about the purpose of our "closed" meetings. As I said before our old PTO died a bitter death and last fall, with the work of a few good people, a new PTO was formed. But we jumped into the routine monthly meetings without having all of our organizational structures in place. Yes we have a president (new blood), vice president (me-new blood), a treasurer (new blood but a full time bookkeeper and really knows her stuff), a secretary and a brand new principle and a few committee leads some new some old but what we don't have is:

1) something that documents what our PTO does for our kids - a marketing piece, the elevator speech for sucking new people in.
2) the roles and responsibilities for each of the board members as well as the committee leads
3) what our processes are for all the things we do – example: how do we keep track of monies so we don't get busted and lose our NPO status. We currently have a committee that sells logo sports wear. We were supposed to be making a profit on each piece sold… in reality we had an $800 loss. Turns out we were being billed for items that had really been sold at the high school. We had no process in place for accounting for what was being sold!
4) what our guiding principles are --- maybe in the PTO world they are called standing rules. I saw that word in another post. But what I mean is how do we conduct ourselves as individuals. What’s acceptable behavior towards each other and what’s not.

We – just the 4 board members listed above - met a couple of weeks ago because one of the board members had received some negative communications about the way the meetings were run and we felt the need to get it out on the table and talk through it – and we didn’t want to do it in the public forum. At this meeting we also talked about all the “groundwork” that still needs to be laid. We felt that the most efficient way would be to meet as a small group and brainstorm our ideas and create a “working document” that we could take to the larger group for discussion, revision and eventually acceeptance. This was our way of cutting through the BS and moving the organization forward at a quicker pace. There was NEVER any intention of making any decisions without the input and support of all participating members.

What’s so funny about all this is our president talked to our lawyer about the legalities of this and unfortunately there was a gap in the communication and our bylaws dictate that all meetings must contain all board members and must be open. So in the end … none of this really matters.

Yesterday when I was pondering this issue I thought… gee I’ll go to the expert community on PTO. I can tell I made the right choice. I really thank all of you who gave your advice.

Our group has them same provision in the bylaws, but now that I think about it, I don't ever recall seeing a bulletin board in my son's school that had ANY of our PTA minutes there! I go to the membership meetings anyway so it really doesn't matter, but it's still makes you go "hmmmm."