As we elect new board members and plan for the 2025-2026 school year we want to share some important information about being a School Support Organization (SSO) in Metro Public Schools. By the end of the year we need at a minimum 3 officers in order to register with MNPS to operate. Board members must be parents/guardians of a student and must represent 3 households.
These required positions are:
- President
- Secretary
- Treasurer
Without filling these required roles we will be unable to operate as a SSO next year and would have to dissolve our organization.
Nomination & Election process:
Every position is available for nomination. Nominate someone or yourself by emailing the pto email. We will then confirm with the nominee that they accept the nomination.
We will vote on all positions for next school year as a whole at our April 15th Meeting.
Our greatest need for 2025-2026 is the role of Treasurer, their basic duties are:
- Attends monthly meetings.
- Manage deposits and withdraws on 1 bank account ~$4,000 with less than 70 transactions a year.
- Prepare monthly reports in our basic spreadsheet.
- Submit annual report of monthly reports to metro.
- We do not file taxes, since we operate under $50k.
- Entire board is responsible for the safeguarding of our treasury not just the treasurer.
Why are we talking about this?
Everything you saw the PTO do this year was led by just three board members and one chairperson.
For the 2024-2025 school year the board consisted of 4th, 2nd, and 1st grade parents. As student’s graduate and move on we need to replace these board members, ideally with parents who were involved the previous year. Our school has 300 students and 54 staff who need the support of a PTO, but we can’t support them without parents.
I’m just too busy to serve on the board…
The board consists of busy parents just like you trying to balance it all. We work on a virtual basis the majority of the time. We have few things that actually require doing something during the school day and they never require the entire board.
The few times we absolutely need the physical presence of the board are at our once a month in person meetings, and during our planned events.
What does the board actually do?
A lot of paperwork. Things that must be approved at the Metro level: annual registration, financial reports, use of the building, any fundraisers.
On a very basic level: The individual roles and responsibilities are
- President - leads the team and files necessary paperwork with Metro, and leads monthly meetings. Primary liaison with school administration/staff.
- VP - assists on leading initiatives as well as administrative duties
- Secretary - maintains the records of our meetings.
- Treasurer - Updates and reconciles our financial transactions on a monthly basis.
- Communications Chair - takes the board’s work, creates flyers graphics etc. and publishes it to our website. Maintains social media presence.
Collectively as a team we
- Develop/Implement ideas for fundraisers/spirit nights
- Develop/Implement ideas for staff appreciation milestones (Holidays, Teacher Appreciation week, etc)
- Work with the principal on new initiatives such as Fall Festival, Dia de los ninos
- Serve as primary volunteers for PTO related events such as the Glow Dance
- Support schools sponsored events with communications and volunteers (Walk to school day, field day)
- Contact businesses and organizations for in-kind and monetary donations.
Ideally we would love to have an PTO officer/representative from each grade that could serve as liaison to other parents in that grade level as needed.
I just really can't. What else can I do?
- Attend our meetings. Just attending gives the board support and ensures we have input from members on our actions. This is an essential piece of operating a non-profit organization.
- Volunteer for & Support our events
- Participate in our Shop to Give programs and enroll friends and family members (Kroger/Publix)
- Like, Comment on, Share our Facebook and Instagram posts to show your support, and excitement!
- Talk to parents you know about the PTO.
- If you have connections with local businesses that might be interested in sponsoring PTO events such as spirit nights, please let us know. Just having an in with businesses would be a huge help.
I see xyz Elementary doing __ why aren’t we?
- The biggest one is volunteers. The more board members and chairs the PTO has, the more we can spread the load of the work, the more we can do.
- Is of course money. The PTO operates on a lean budget of direct donations, Shop to Give partners, and spirit night events.
- It’s math. We are one of the smallest elementary schools in MNPS at 300 students. Half the elementary schools in MNPS are over 500 students, that’s 1.8x Pennington. They simply have a bigger pool of parents to fundraise and volunteer.
What happens if we can’t find 3 board members from 3 households?
- The PTO must dissolve our status at the Metro, State, and IRS level.
- Reestablishing is a lengthy and costly process vs the $20 a year we currently pay the state of TN to exist.
- Funds must be spent or given to the school, where they would be subject to Metro’s purchasing rules.
- Fundraising Flexibility: The school itself can fundraise but the options are far more limited and collecting cash in most cases is not possible. Burden of creating the fundraisers would fall on staff.
- Communication: We leverage our status as an authorized entity to be able to have a facebook page and group that shares PTO communications, supports school communications, shares photos and videos of school and after school events. The school would continue to maintain their page but they are not allowed to have a group.
- Family Events: Event planning would fall solely on administration and teachers. Dance would likely not happen, other events would be smaller, and lack funding.
- Volunteers: School itself would need to administrate the collection of volunteers. With the current staffing this would be a significant burden.
- Fifth Grade Field Trip: The PTOs ability to support students this year has made it possible for the Fifth Grade Field Trip to happen. Without the PTO parents would have to pay an additional amount or the trip would have to be canceled. The PTO voted to provide the funds needed for the trip to happen.
- Resource flexibility: As a PTO our funds and acquisitions are not subject to our bylaws not Metros purchasing process. We can fill a need of the school without months of waiting and have far more options.
- Less Enrichment: We fill the gap in providing much needed special materials and resources for teacher and school projects.
We are small but mighty, come dream BIG with us. Join the PTO!
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