The following is a letter that I wrote to board members, other members, and a few staff members of the Aragon High School PTSA criticizing them for their efforts to disband the PTSA and establish a PTO. I have been very frustrated with what has been happening this year, and wrote this letter to get all my feelings out in the open.

I am running for and have agreed for my name to be on the slate for PTSA President, but if the parents decide to go PTO, I shall have absolutely nothing to do with the organization. My comments regarding the issue at last Wednesday’s meeting were strictly from a neutral point of view of ensuring that all procedures are followed properly. However, in my opinion, disbanding the Aragon PTSA is a really misguided idea which is based on fallacious reasoning, and I wish to take an opportunity to explain my point of view on this question.

This year’s board has spent too much effort on trying to undercut the PTSA. I have been wary about the actions that they have been taking, including the emptying of the PTSA bank accounts so that 17th District doesn’t “take” any of “Aragon’s money.” First of all, what the PTSA raises belongs to itself; it does not belong to Aragon. If the school wants money, they can fundraise for themselves, or they can ask us to help them out, which is what they currently do. The PTSA does its own fundraising, therefore, they decide how to spend the money. (It should be known that if Aragon PTSA disbanded, 17th District would simply hold funds in trust for a period of 2 years–if the PTSA reformed within those two years, they would receive everything back from 17th District.) But my big complaint is that this emptying of the account is done without any consent of the association, and so if the members vote to remain a PTSA, then we will be starting out the 2007-08 school year bankrupt. Now if THAT’S not encumbering future boards, I don’t know what is.

One idea that has been proposed to avoid the transitional hassle would be to set up a PTO while the PTSA is still active, and then try to disband the PTSA, but this also has numerous problems. Setting up a PTO only requires a few founding members; it does not take a vote of PTSA members to decide whether or not to start one up. If the PTSA members then voted not to disband the PTSA, there would be two competing parent organizations at that point. I do not believe that the PTO leadership would up and decide to disband their brand new organization just because the PTSA didn’t want to break up. I am already familiar with this situation because my mom was president for 2 years of the San Mateo Park Elementary PTA, and they have a competing organization of parents (the San Mateo Park Foundation) who formed out of the “rich side” of El Camino Real when they couldn’t get rid of their PTA. As such, they ended up competing for fundraising dollars, resulting in the parents being bombarded for donation requests and participation, and both groups ended up continually clashing. By setting up the PTO before a vote is taken on the fate of the PTSA, there is the possibility of such a situation arising at Aragon.

However, my greatest concern with the consideration of disbanding is the rationale that has been put forward by the supporters of PTO. 17th District PTA has seen the loss of a few units over my tenure there. Often these disbanding units have had some fairly good reasons. For example, one group wanted to pay for a physical education program, which is not allowed by PTA insurance. I haven’t seen any good reasons for disbanding out of the proposal for Aragon. I’ll try to tackle a few of the reasons that I have heard from Aragon PTO supporters:

One reason for disbanding is that we currently cannot carry over funds year over year. First of all, all PTA/PTSA units are 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, and so by law, they should not be carrying over a surplus between fiscal years. A PTO would be bound by the exact same law. Furthermore, Aragon already has many non-PTA parent groups which are not restricted by this policy, including the recently-formed Aragon Foundation. If the PTSA were looking into spending the kind of money which requires holding funds over fiscal years, I think that it would probably be more reasonable to have the school pay for it (since it’s for the school), and then they could ask the PTSA each year to make a donation. Even then, I have not seen a situation that has been presented where this process would be necessary. Year-over-year restriction is not one that is playing out as a major issue in our organization, and there are a number of available workarounds through the other groups we have at Aragon.

Another reason for disbanding which I’ve heard mentioned a lot is the complaint about Aragon sending membership dues up to 17th District, State, and National PTA. For every member of Aragon PTSA (who currently pays $5 for membership), $1.75 goes to National PTA, $1.25 goes to State PTA, and $0.50 goes to 17th District PTA. Aragon PTSA keeps $1.50 of that. The first problem with that argument is that the PTSA already has the freedom to increase membership dues if they want to. Did you know that all of the PTOs at the other schools in the district charge more than $5 for membership? And they don’t even send any of theirs on to PTA! It has been really cheap in the past to become a member of Aragon PTSA, and it doesn’t have to continue to be $5/member if the low per capita retention is causing a financial burden. We could easily increase our membership dues through a bylaws amendment, and the $3.50 per member that we currently send up the PTA channels would not go up. For example, if we increased our membership cost from $5 to $8, Aragon PTSA would then retain $4.50/member, which is triple what we currently retain. Therefore, I don’t see how difficulties sending up membership dues is a reason to disband.

What I suspect to be the real motivation is the “My four and no more” mentality: that money raised from Aragon parents should only be going to Aragon students. But you know something? Over the last 110 years, the PTA has represented over 6 million parents, students, and teachers nationwide (1 million of them in California). Their hard work has gotten laws implemented such as physical education in schools, arts funding in schools, smoking out of schools, a separate juvenile justice system, and many many other things that we all take for granted these days. (There’s a good article on the history and advocacy of PTA here: http://www.capta.org/sections/basics/brief-history.cfm) If Aragon pulls out their support of PTA, it may seem like it won’t make that big of a difference. But, if every unit in the state or in the country thought that way, that would be a significant blow to the PTA, and we would lose this national organization working for the interests of public education. We would not have a public education for our students as we know it today if it wasn’t for the PTA. In San Mateo County alone, Aragon is our second largest unit out of 110 units in the county, and the 17th District board really does not want to lose it. This is why you see us representatives from 17th District fighting so hard to save this PTSA, because the loss of Aragon means the loss of a tremendous load of personal and financial support at the district level, and at both of the other channels as well.

And finally, one of the proposed reasons for disbanding the PTSA is being able to set the rules “any way we want.” I know, having to have a new board every year, and not allowing officers to serve more than two terms in a row is annoying to many. Requiring funds to be released from a budget and having checks be ratified at general meetings is annoying to many. Having to resubmit bylaws every other year and having to conduct two audits a year is annoying to many. But a lot of these things are required of us as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization by law, and many of them are there for the protection of the officers and the organization as a whole. I can’t tell you how many stories I hear when I go to Convention every Spring about units who disbanded and stripped out a lot of these safety policies from their PTO bylaws, and then a few years later, it was found that their officers were embezzling money. I also hear about many units who disband and then put on an event where an accident takes place, and then the officers are held personally liable and often lose some or all of their property because the group didn’t have the right kind of insurance. These aren’t “It could happen” warnings, these are things that have happened to actual groups who have disbanded from PTA. PTA includes insurance which covers the organization, the individual officers, workers compensation, and more. The insurance that the school district would be able to offer us if we were a PTO would not cover the actual officers from liability, and would not cover any of the other areas that PTA insurance covers. The policies and forms and due dates of the PTA are there for the protection of everyone, and from that point of view, they are not unreasonable.

I have worked with the PTSA board, particularly with Mike, to try to keep the discussion as neutral as possible, but this has not taken place. Mike has told me that he has tried to be neutral, but this is not good enough. As the leadership of the Aragon PTSA, it is the responsibility of the entire board to be neutral during this discussion, and they have been anything but. For one example, see what I wrote above about the board trying to empty the bank account so that the PTA won’t try to take it away from them. However, what makes me the most upset was to hear that the PTSA board voted to become a PTO. That vote should never have taken place. It was not the responsibility of the PTSA board to take the vote; as I said, they are supposed to be neutral. The members of the association are the ones who take the vote. This vote that our PTSA board took means absolutely nothing in terms of action. Its purpose was only to sway opinion, and it makes our PTSA leadership look unprofessional. When I read Mike’s e-mail that said that the PTSA board voted unanimously to disband, my first thought was, why did we elect leaders who would be so cannibalistic to their own organization? If President Bush and his entire cabinet took a vote stating that the United States should be disbanded, I would think that they would probably be impeached fairly quickly. Unfortunately, the PTA bylaws do not provide provisions for impeaching board members. Aragon PTSA created a committee in September for the purpose of studying the proposal and making a recommendation, which was their job, NOT the executive board’s. When a letter was sent out saying that the committee that met to discuss the transition had no recommendation, and was then followed by the announcement that the PTSA board had voted unanimously to disband, it definitely put a very misleading message in folks’ mind. I have been personally dissatisfied with our executive board this year, which is the biggest reason that I decided to run for PTSA President.

Additionally, the parents have been misinformed. In the recent mailing of report cards, an attachment about the disbanding meeting on April 18th (as it was indicated) was included, and it only contained PTO pros (what you can see here: https://www.edline.net/pages/Aragon_High_School/2664163551530400610/Pro_s_about_PTO). It contained nothing about PTA. PTA pros were written to go out along with PTO pros, but they did not appear in the mailing. However, right after the letter was sent out, the board changed the date of the vote to May 16th, thereby deliberately misinforming parents of when this important matter will be considered. Our board has been very sneaky in informing parents about the vote, and they have not done their best to provide accurate and unbiased information to parents regarding when the vote is. The information about the vote needs to be put on the FRONT PAGE of Edline, it needs to be put in every Topica e-mail, it needs to be published in the Aragonette, it should be put up on signs around school, it should be in the 5th period announcements, and it should be phoned home to every family using the phone system. But what should be published to parents are the bare facts: Vote to Decide on Disbanding the PTSA and Form a PTO, Wednesday May 16th, 7 PM, Aragon Library. That’s it. Instead, the latest Topica that was sent out included the board’s unanimous “decision” as if it was already decided. It also set out to make PTA be the villain by mentioning how “if we disband and there is still money in the bank, the PTA will take our money. We raised this money for Aragon.” (direct quote). This is biased information which can be used in debate during the actual discussion on May 16th, but has absolutely no place in an official parent notification.

In conclusion, the question of disbanding to become a PTO is one with a lot of unjustified reasoning, and we as a Parent-Teacher-Student Association are certainly more than capable of continuing to function without the transition. But furthermore, I condemn our entire PTSA board for clearly not remaining neutral in the question of PTSA vs. PTO, deconstructing the necessary foundations of the PTSA without any kind of input or approval of the membership as a whole, and for attempting to influence the decisions of the members of the Aragon PTSA. This entire school year, we have seen not only this problem, but other problems such as district budget crises and staff contract negotiations severely polarize the Aragon community into two groups pitted against each other. It is my hope that on May 16th, the parents of Aragon will make the right decision, and then we can go into the next school year having put all of the many troubles of this school year behind us and go forward to make Aragon an even better place for education.

–Douglas Bell
Sophomore and Member, Aragon PTSA