There was a new Pto started at our school last year, I'm with JHB.
Elections can be very important to parents. We had about 30 attend the organizational meeting and you signed up if you were interested in a position. About three weeks later, we had elections and very few showed up and only one position was contested. The next thing we knew people were complaining that they were not notified of the election(notice was sent out in backpacks) or they thought there would be another opportunity to nominate people. Thus we started out where people who regularly volunteered at the school were unwilling to be involved.
That you have experienced PTA gives you an upper hand in knowledge of proper procedures in how to organize. We had officers who didn't know that the membership had to approve the bylaws.
Good Luck
In my opinion, just use good faith and common sense. You are at the beginning of the year and need to get things running, so you don't want to lose a lot of time over "process". But nor do you want to run over anyone.
I would suggest you publicize the opportunities well and fill your slots. If you have multiple candidates, you can have an election, otherwise just prepare your slate of officers.
Your membership is probably fairly well defined, so call a meeting of that group, present the officers, and vote - simple majority. THEN, you finalize and vote on the bylaws.
However, if you assemble your group and vote in your bylaws FIRST, then you must abide by them. So if they say you have to put together a nominating committee, that there must be X number of days before elections, etc. - you have to follow those rules. Not that you are trying to sidestep any good practices, but the first time around that may lengthen your timeline too much.
A group of us are in the process on of drafting Bylaws and Articles of Inc. for our new Elementary School PTO.
My question is since the PTO is new and the board is just in the process of being formed, how do actually install the first board and introduce it since no voting takes place?? I have been part of 2 new PTA's in the past and we never had a problem before, but I want to do this the right way. Any suggestions?
Thanks
