Secretary and Historian Resources

This page is dedicated to information, and resources for PTA recording secretaries, corresponding secretaries, and historians. Click the text below to download / view forms and resources.

Still have questions? Contact the First District PTA Recording Secretary Jennifer Vargo via email at Secretary@PTA1.org.

Secretaries

Secretary Handbook (From June 2019 Leadership Conference)

Secretary Job Description (From Nov 2024 Toolkit on capta.org)

Sample Agenda & Meeting Planner

Historians (updated 4/9/25)

As of 2025, historians are no longer required to submit a Historian Report to First District.

The change was announced at the February 24, 2025 FDPTA Association meeting. California State PTA leadership voted this year to eliminate the requirement. The reason behind that decision was that the data is no longer being utilized and the submission compliance rate state-wide was a struggle for districts.

Some additional information to consider:

- Given the change in the reporting requirement, PTAs may want to consider whether or not they wants to keep the historian position, and if so, what sorts of duties that position should have. In many PTAs, the historian position had evolved into simply being the tracker of hours. However, in some councils and units, historians have other responsibilities — like planning the Founders Day celebration. Here’s a page from the CAPTA website that describes other things that can fall into a historian’s duties, depending on the unit or council’s traditions or desires: https://capta.org/how-to-incorporate-your-historians-work-into-your-pta-all-year/.
- Units may want to consider if precious volunteer time is best spent in a historian role — especially units and councils with limited volunteer/exec board participation. Units and councils that have trouble meeting quorum or lack other important positions might want to consider looking at their bylaws and thinking about which positions they truly want to have as part of their executive board. For example, units and councils that don’t currently have a Membership VP or a Legislation VP may want to consider if a historian position should be replaced by one of these positions that is directly aligned with the essential mission of PTA. Note that any changes to positions requires a bylaws revision through the standard bylaws update process.
- For units and councils that currently have historian as one of the positions in their bylaws, it is still a formal seat on the executive board. As a result, the PTA should still plan to fill it for 2025-2026. It’s just that one of the main duties of historians (submitting the historian report up through channels) is no longer needed.
- We do not presently know if or when the bylaws template will be automatically updated by California State PTA to reflect any changes regarding historians, but the 2024 bylaw template from 10/24 has some language that now shows the historian as an optional position, similar to a financial secretary (optional positions are italicized):
  * * * * *
  
  ARTICLE V – OFFICERS AND THEIR ELECTION
  
  ***SECTION 1. Each officer or board member of this association shall be a member of this association.
  
  SECTION 2. The officers of this association shall be a president, executive vice president, _______________ (_____) vice presidents, recording secretary, corresponding secretary, treasurer, financial secretary, financial reviewer, historian, and parliamentarian. These officers shall be elected annually with the exception of the corresponding secretary and the parliamentarian, who shall be appointed by the president subject to the ratification of the executive board.
  
  * * * * *
- For units that files a 990-EZ for State Tax Return: the 990-EZ form asks for a list of officers on page 2, Part IV, and asks for an average number of hours per week devoted to the position. Some units used the historian spreadsheet info to populate these fields. However, rather than pulling from a comprehensive historian spreadsheet, the PTA can just ask each officer for an estimate of their average hours per week and put that in this section.