Want to know a secret about Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) and Parent Teacher Association (PTA) bylaws and what makes them good (and not so good)?
Maybe this burning question has popped into your mind a few times.
And that’s a good thing since the bylaws are so very crucial for a healthy and vibrant and active PTO.
PTO bylaws are really the backbone of the group and kind of set out the group’s hopes, the goals, and the aims of the group.
They can help keep everybody literally on the same page.
This is pretty hard when you are managing a volunteer organization, especially an all-volunteer organization, which of course PTOs and PTAs are.
So let’s spill five secrets to strong PTO/PTA bylaws!
Secret #1: The Best Bylaws are a Reflection of the PTO
The first thing to know is that really good PTO/PTA bylaws address the group as it is now.
They should be like a mirror, reflecting back the reality for your school parent group.
Bylaws that address your group as it was in the past, say when there was a wider volunteer base a number of years ago for example, probably aren’t going to work very well now.
For example, if your group was once really big, your quorum was probably a lot bigger to kind of match the reality of the group as it was then.
This is exact situation that my group had when I was PTA Council President.
Our quorum was set at 12, but we were never getting enough people at the meeting to meet quorum requirements.
A quorum of 12 might not seem like a big number, but for this group, it was.
If you’re not familiar, a PTA council works differently than a than other school parent groups.
PTA Councils are comprised of all of the individual PTA units in a school district and have an Executive Board that operate and oversee the group.
All PTA members in the school district can come to the PTA Council meetings, but only the unit Presidents, Council Delegates and Council Executive Board members have voting privileges.
In my school district, there were six PTA Presidents and every school had one or two delegates plus the executive board of the council.
The Executive Board was set at six members, and they could be from any one of the six PTA units in the school district.
When quorum was originally set at 12, different volunteers served in these roles for the most part, so the voting pool was right around 24 members.
So it made sense for quorum to be half of the voting pool.
But over time, the voting pool got much smaller and no one really realized it until it was too late.
What had happened without anyone really noticing was that voting members starting taking on multiple roles.
Unit Presidents were all serving on the Council Executive Board as well.
And the individual PTA units were no longer sending multiple Council Delegates, so the overall voting pool was closer to 15 people, shrinking by 40% of what it had once reliably been.
So for this group, a quorum set at 12 was way too high, especially since no more than 8 people were actually coming to any given Council meeting.
The failure to have quorum at meetings was killing the group’s ability to get anything done.
It kept the group treading water instead of being able to have an actual impact.
The Council resolved the issue by amending the bylaws to reflect a lower quorum, one based on actual participation.
And this change ended up serving the group much better because the new lowered quorum was based on the group as it actually was in existence and matched how the group was operating.
It was looking back to yesteryear, and that condition that I’ll tell you even to this day—and that that decision was made probably seven or eight years ago—there’s still not more people involved.
So it really was crucial to address that.
The lowered participation rate for this PTA Council wasn’t a short-term trend.
It actually matched what was going on in most of the other PTA units in the school district.
So anyway, if take a look at your bylaws and see where you have that same issue, not specifically about quorum, it could be about that quorum, but it could be about something else.
Match the Group’s Structure with the Volunteer Base
Another example of a misalignment is when the volunteer base shrinks so that the group’s activities and programs can’t be adequately supported.
I have direct experience with this situation as well.
When I was at the elementary school, the PTA had a ton of different committees, including a school garden.
And this one year, it turned out that we could not find a volunteer who was interested in heading up the committee, let alone serving on the committee.
Now, the PTA had previously expanded because enrollment had increased quite drastically because two other elementary schools had closed.
Three schools were merged into one, meaning that the one school had a very large number of involved parents.
And to ensure there was an opportunity for all interested parents to participate, the group expanded their programs and activities.
This worked fantastically for many years. Until it didn’t.
What changed?
The parents and kids that had merged into the school aged out of the building and up into the next school.
And gradually, over a number of years, the PTO began to shrink back down to its normal size.
Then the group was left with all of this work to be done and not enough people to do it.
So we had to eliminate some committees, and the community garden or the school garden actually was the one that we identified that needed to go.
Even though the garden was listed in the group’s bylaws as a standing committee, we had to amend the governing document to reflect the change.
The group needed to let go of some of the programing to stay on track and not overextend volunteers.
It was a hard decision and the discussions were difficult and sometimes fraught, but the changes were entirely necessary.
Secret #2: Strong Bylaws Operate Like a User Guide for Your PTO
The next secret for strong bylaws is a set that functions like a map or user guide for your group.
Good bylaws should provide a path to follow for members of your group so they understand the group at large, as well as their role within the group itself.
The document should include descriptions of the most important issues to know about your group, including, but not limited to:
- The number and type of leaders and group officers
- A job description for the leaders and officers
- The mission of the group
- The process for elections
- How to handle leadership vacancies
- Processes for handling group money
Find a complete run down of what to include in PTO bylaws this post.
The general idea is to draft the bylaws in a way that it’ll explain to anyone unfamiliar how your group works.
They should look a the bylaws and know what to do next.
If your bylaws don’t have this amount of detail, then this is an area for improvement to tackle with an bylaws update soon.
Secret #3: Good Bylaws Have Sensible Term Limits
The best bylaws also contain term limits.
And by term limits, not any old number will do.
The term limits have to be sensible and designed to give the volunteer enough time to figure out the role and make progress.
At the same time, the term limit should not feel like a trap to keep the position filled.
A friend of mine was in a role in the as PTO President, and her term limit was three years long.
This is an incredibly long time for someone to serve in that role.
I happen to think that two years is the magic number.
Having served as PTO President for a few groups for longer than 2 years, I can tell you that it’s exhausting and can lead to burn out.
If any one person spends too much time in a role, things get stale.
Volunteers get complacent and lean on what they’ve done before.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, doing what’s worked before, but sometimes it’s not what the group needs.
Sometimes the school community has changed just enough to need a different approach and a complacent volunteer may not notice.
A healthy parent group has volunteers who can be put into different roles and thrive.
And the volunteers understand how the group works more generally, rather than just how one specific volunteer role works.
This way, the group isn’t dependent on any one volunteer and won’t be left in the lurch if the super experienced volunteer’s time and talents are no longer available.
There’s nothing wrong with having all new volunteers, it’s just harder to run a group like that and it takes more time.
It can be frustrating for the new leaders who might need some more support than is available.
The best practice is to implement up to two year term limits and rotate volunteers through different positions.
Secret #4: Leader Expectations are Spelled Out in Bylaws
Officer expectations should also be included in your bylaws.
This comes up so many times in the Superstar PTO Leaders community, which is my free Facebook group (join now, if you haven’t!).
Quite often, a member of the group will be looking for help with a difficult situation involving an officer of their parent group.
Sometimes the leader has completely ghosted the rest of the group, other times, they’ve not been to a single PTO meeting all year, other times, they officer isn’t responding in a timely manner.
And all of this is a problem because PTO leaders aren’t put into their position to keep the seat warm.
The whole purpose of being involved in a PTO as an officer is to act like a leader, contribute your opinions, your perspective, your expertise into the mix and help the group achieve its goals and the plans for the year.
So if a particular officer is not contributing, then they really need to make room for someone who’s willing to do the work.
That’s why setting out the expectations in the group’s bylaws that leaders are expected to attend meetings, participate in discussions, etc. is important.
Same with the use of bad or vulgar language.
If that’s an issue for your group with someone dropping f-bombs left and right and the general vibe has gotten out of control, then add that expectation to the bylaws as well.
By the way, you don’t have to specify that f-bombs are not allowed, but you can frame it more of as an expectation of all treating each other with respect and acting professionally.
That kind of covers the bad language issue, right?
Because if you are acting professionally, then you are not dropping those f-bombs, not calling people out and not being difficult to work with.
And that should do a great deal to improve the working environment!
Secret #5: Plain and Simple Language Bylaws Rule Supreme
The last secret to stellar PTO bylaws is a simple and straightforward one: use plain and clear simple language in your group’s bylaws.
I personally am pretty tired of seeing convoluted bylaws and standing rules that that take several readings to understand.
Complicated bylaws that are difficult to comprehend are trash, in my opinion.
And totally opposite to the goal of the bylaws to get everyone on the same page.
The hill I’m willing to die on is that using fancy or complicated language in bylaws is horrible and does not make them more official or proper.
It just makes it more difficult to understand the bylaws.
And when the bylaws are difficult to understand, they won’t be followed.
The fancy language (like heretofore, foregoing, etc. and anything else that requires a second, third or fourth read through to comprehend) makes the bylaws unapproachable.
The opposite of what your school parent group wants and needs!
You want members and volunteers to be using and referencing the bylaws and to guide their decisions and actions.
When updating your bylaws, look at how you can say things more simply, and make everything easier to understand.
Resources You’ll Love
The Bylaws and Standing Rules Made Simple kit breaks down the process of creating or updating your group’s governing documents into easy to follow steps anyone can do. The kit, written in plain English, will help you transform your bylaws into off-putting legalese into words everyone can understand! Get your copy here.
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Over to You
I hope you now have a better understanding of how to create stronger PTO bylaws!
A good set can save your group so much headache and trouble, so it’s worth investing some time to improve the set you have.
When the bylaws get out of alignment with the current reality of the group, it can cause the group to break down.
Work to have the bylaws match your group as it is now, with enough detail to be helpful.
Then embrace and lean into the bylaws.
It’ll make for a stronger school parent group overall!
