The Maryland PTA has stripped the Baltimore City Council of PTAs of its authority to operate, amid concerns that the group's president is using his post as a platform to express personal criticism of city schools chief Andres Alonso.
State PTA officials said the city group has been operating without two of the three required officers, a secretary and a treasurer. They are concerned that the president of the city's PTA council, Eric White, has been promoting his own views at forums where he's speaking in his official capacity.
The group's charter requires that officers publicly present the consensus of the organization.
In addition, the city's council could not produce copies of its meeting minutes and its budget for the Maryland PTA.
While the local organization is inactive, PTAs at individual city schools will still receive support services from the statewide group.
White denied yesterday that the organization has been put on inactive status, despite a Maryland PTA letter sent this week saying that the group must "cease and desist" using the PTA name.
"The only thing that we've been told we need to fix is to elect and appoint a treasurer and a secretary," he said.
He said that the group is in the process of electing the officers as required and that that's the problem outlined in the letter. Debbie Ritchie, Maryland PTA president, disagreed, saying, "I think it's pretty clear what the letter says."
The city's PTA council had been on probation for two years before the statewide PTA's executive committee voted this month to make it inactive.
The city's PTA council is meant to provide training to school PTAs. Some school PTAs in the city have complained that White is charging them dues although school chapters are not required to belong to the citywide council.
Ritchie said school PTAs must belong to the state and national PTAs but may choose whether to join the citywide council. White steadfastly maintains that all 51 PTAs in the city are required to join and pay dues.
In recent months, White has become an outspoken, if unconventional, critic of the Alonso administration.
While Alonso has met multiple times in the past year with other parent groups in the city, such as the Parent and Community Advisory Board and the Baltimore Education Network, he was never invited to a PTA council meeting or event.
