Do your PTA meetings seem to run on forever? Does it feel like nothing ever gets decided? Do you actually have a published agenda for your meeting? Building an effective agenda for your PTA meeting is probably the most important thing you can do to improve your meetings, and in doing so, you’ll also improve how your PTA operates.

The Basics

The basic framework for an agenda is straightforward:

  • Call to Order
  • Approval of the Minutes
  • Reports from Officers and Committees
  • Unfinished Business (from previous meetings)
  • New Business
  • Announcements
  • Adjournment

By publishing your agenda before your meeting, complete with a copy of the minutes and any written committee reports (including the treasurer’s report), you can speed up your PTA meeting. In addition, if a member knows a specific agenda item that they care about will be discussed, they are more likely to attend your meeting.

Building the Agenda

To properly build an agenda, you need to communicate with your fellow PTA officers and board members. Make sure you start this communication process early enough to get your agenda and supporting materials out before your meeting. Find out what information needs to be reported from committees, what decisions need to be made, and who needs to make those decisions. The latter is especially important, as far too many PTAs bog their general membership meetings down with discussions that could be handled by the PTA board in a more efficient manner. 

There are only a few specific items that must be voted on at your PTA’s general membership meetings:

  • To accept the audit report
  • To approve (or later amend) the budget
  • To approve a full set of bylaws or bylaws amendments (these require a 2/3 majority)
  • To elect a nominating committee
  • To elect your officers

Your PTA membership does not necessarily need to be included in discussions on when to hold the Book Fair, which game stations to have at the spring fun fair, or which restaurant to have cater lunch during Teacher Appreciation Week. Those sorts of decisions are best handled by committees or your PTA board.

Remember that in order to conduct business, you must have a quorum present. The quorum for your general membership meetings, board meetings, and executive committee meetings are in your PTA’s bylaws.

Committee reports may come with items that require a vote. Such motions from a committee do not need a second because the committee is implicitly charged with making recommendations for the meeting to decide. Thus, they have already been identified as worthy of discussion and a vote. Note that the treasurer’s report is not adopted, but simply accepted without a vote since the data in the report has not been audited. If your PTA has a principal’s report or a teacher’s report, they would be included here.

Under Unfinished Business are items that were not able to be decided at a previous meeting. This may have been because more information was needed to finish the discussion or because the meeting attendees were unable to reach a decision (e.g., if there were three possible options, but none of them could garner a majority).

Under New Business are items that have not been discussed in prior meetings. Making sure that information relevant to the discussion is shared along with the agenda can speed up debate on the topic, as everyone is working from a common understanding of the issue. You may want to be explicit in what decisions need to be made on a topic to help members be prepared to make decisions.

Announcements cover information items and usually do not require a vote. These may include things like volunteers needed for the Book Fair, upcoming dates of events and the next PTA meeting, and specific agenda items that will be covered at the next meeting (e.g., election of officers).

Using Your Agenda

By publishing your agenda and supporting materials in advance, you can speed up your PTA meeting. Rather than having to take the time for everyone to read over the minutes at the PTA meeting, you can simply ask, “Are there any corrections to the minutes?” and if there are none, following with, “Without objection, the minutes are approved as written.” (Note that if there are corrections, the phrase becomes “…approved as corrected.”) There’s no need to go through the motion, second, and vote process unless someone does object.

Your agenda is also a crucial tool in focusing the discussion. If debate on an issue starts to veer off track, you can steer it back in the right direction with a simple, “Let’s stay focused on the agenda item.” If someone brings up something that will be covered later in the agenda, you can ask them to hold off until that item is discussed.

Other Resources

Illinois PTA has shared other resources related to running effective PTA meetings that you may find useful: