some use an egg timer at meetings, every egg gets the same amount of floor time. when the timer goes off, time is up. no ifs ands or buts. all are treated the same. period.

We have one of those too. Only when we try to give her a job to do, she never follows through and we end up having to do it ourselves or give it to someone else. She complains about everything and thinks she has all the answers but won't do anything to help change. We have given up trying to give her jobs to do and frankly we are all (the board and several other regular attendees) tired of listening to her ramble on and on. Since I am the President, I feel that it is my job to handle her. No president before me has had the guts to say anything to her but when she gets going and won't stop, I just interrupt her and say, "I'm sorry, I think that we have spent enough time on this topic and we really need to move on to the next item on the agenda." We have even thought about putting a 3 minute speaking limit per person per topic in effect just because of her. Hope this helps.

I would ask her if she is willing to head up that committee and take control since she seems to have to many ideas on how the event should be run. I've used that many times during two years being PTO president and the person clammed up quickly or suddenly had to go speak to someone. They didn't complain like that and embarass or harass the present chairperson going forward.
Some people have nothing to say, but negative criticism. When you put them on the spot and ask them to put their ideas into motion and take over, they tend to back down. If they don't, then politely ask them to keep their comments to a more positive note since the negative criticism is interupting the progress of the meeting and you need to hear constructive ideas that can be implemented.

I recommend putting her in charge of investigating possibilities of corrective action. This way she'll spend the time, offline, and maybe her actions will end up helping. Explain to her that she will need to report to you about the issue and the different possibilities that she comes up regarding fixing them. Depending on the situation you may need to give her guidelines, like "if you need to talk with the Principal, staff or anyone in the district regarding this please let me know so that I can be present" (or something like that).

Regards,
PresidentJim

I am pretty sure that we all have this parent at our school....
I know we sure do, and the advice you have been given has been right on!
What we have done to the parent who does this at our meetings is give her a job. Its a simple one, she is in charge of our calling our volunteers for our functions and coordinating them. We go over it with her what will need to be done and she comunicates it. It has worked well so far, I think she just wanted to feel needed and whats best for her kids school but didn't know how to go about it. Now is she suddenly miss happy positive all the time...
NO! But there has been a huge improvement!
Good luck!

The next time the cynic challenges a participant's idea, simply ask him to suggest a better idea. For example, "You're challenging this idea. Perhaps you could recommend something better?" Or change negativity into something positive by asking him what he thinks is good about the presented idea. For example, "Now that you've let us know what you don't like about the idea, tell us a what you do like about the concept."
If you don't feel comfortable confronting this individual in front of the group, talk to him in private. Let him know how the group feels about his meeting behavior and how this behavior affects the group. Make it clear that he's a valuable member of the team, but that he needs to work on being a more effective team member. Give him suggestions on how he can do this. After all, there's nothing more destructive than giving criticism without providing tips on how to overcome

~How to Keep a meeting on track