For Secretaries
Roles and Responsibilities
There are two types of secretaries that can fall under the role of PTO Secretary. Each school is different; some may have both, and some may combine these roles into one.
Recording Secretary
The recording secretary focuses on compiling, organizing and sharing meeting minutes and agendas. In Rockwood, these need to be posted on the PTO website. It is important to post all your meeting dates at the beginning of the school year. This allows people to plan their schedules around your meetings.
Communications Secretary
This person is the public relations expert for the PTO. The Communications Secretary focuses on spreading good news about your PTO's accomplishments throughout the school year. This can be in the form of Facebook posts, newsletters or ParentSquare announcements. The Communications Secretary is also responsible for spreading the word about fundraisers and special events happening throughout the year.
New Secretaries
- Meet with the former secretary before the school year ends. Listen to their advice, walk through their files together, take notes, and follow up with questions. Use this time to go through the Google Drive to see how they organized their documents.
- Familiarize yourself with your PTO's bylaws and carefully read your job description.
- Familiarize yourself with Robert's Rules of Order, especially the instructions about the content and format of an agenda and minutes.
- Set up a Google Drive that can be shared with your board and passed on to the secretary who will replace you.
Plan to leave the secretary's "office" in better shape than when you arrived. By keeping an eye on quality all year long, you'll serve the PTO well this year and into the future. A smooth transition can be made easy by simply handing over the rights to the Google Drive you have created.
- Develop or update the secretary procedures manual for your PTO.
- Keep samples of all your creative work and formal copies of all official documents, such as minutes and agendas in a Google Drive.
- If the historical record-keeping for the PTO consists of a mess of paperwork in an old box, spend a little time organizing it in a Google Drive. Organize past years' records into neat files, one per year. Purge duplicate or extraneous papers. Scan old documents into Google Drive.