Yo, I’m a PTO President

Me, a PTO President?  Not in my wildest dreams.  Up until last April, I’d never even been to a PTO meeting.  Then in May, my friend and I were voted in as co-presidents.

There wasn’t a battle for the position.   My friend and I didn’t have to campaign bigly.  We didn’t employ any Trumpesque tactics promising to make the PTO great again.  Nope, we just had to throw our names in the ring and let ourselves be voted in uncontested.

I wonder why no one else wanted the job?

How do You be a PTO President?

Since I didn’t know how to be a PTO president, I did the first thing that our media-oriented society does: I looked for a role model in the entertainment industry.  I went to see Bad Moms.

Yeah, not quite the PTO image I was looking for.  I decided to wing it.  This is what I thought I was in charge of:

• Running monthly PTO meetings
• Fundraising

Turns out, it’s a little more involved than that.

What a PTO President Does

With great power comes great responsibility.  But the reverse is not true – great responsibility does not always bring great power.  In fact, a PTO president has very little power and many more responsibilities than the two listed above.

The PTO president is definitely responsible for making sure the PTO raises money, much more money than I realized.  But this money is used for numerous activities, and the president needs to make sure these activities happen. For example, some of the things our PTO pays for are:

• School assemblies
• Field trips
• Family fun nights
• Books/equipment for the school
• School beautification projects

And then there are the activities that require little to no money, such as:

• Organizing class lists/assigning room parents
• Helping in the school when needed (e.g. picture day)
• Staff appreciation events
• Copying papers for teachers

Making sure all of these things got off the ground during the first month of school was tough. But then…

Bring in the Volunteers

Our parents care about our school and are eager to help (I guess I was the loser parent that didn’t get involved).  And while my friend and I were running around, making phone calls and sending emails, our Volunteer Coordinator was busy organizing the parents into committees responsible for each activity.  And each committee was assigned a chair person to organize the activity.

We’ve delegated away most of the jobs.  It’s the end of October and dare I say the PTO presidents have it pretty good?  Now it’s just a matter of making sure everything is running smoothly and fielding complaints/problems that arise.  (You’d be surprised what pops up.)  Oh yes, and continually revising, copying and sending out updated class lists.

I almost feel like I’m cheating.  In fact, I think I might be able to handle this PTO president thing.