A very good point, Kathy! I was on our School Council from 1997 to the end of 2001 (during my boys' senior elementary school years) and was Secretary during the last year. I still have the huge binder of notes and minutes from all the meetings over those 5 years, and I just checked back.
A new executive WAS voted on for each year. The elections used to be in the early fall, but it was changed to June, so that the new executive was already in place for the next school year. The last year I was there we also had co-chairs, mainly because there was such a large amount of correspondence from the ministry to go through and no one at the time felt they had enough time to devote to it all. I guess we were lucky, because everyone got along very well with each other, during my years there.
The only thing I noticed during my last year, when we became part of the larger Thames Valley District School Board which included London and our school changed from grades 6 to 8 to JK to 8, was that the new principal (who transferred from a jr. elementary school) and the large number of new parent members seemed to dwell a lot on the younger grades. Of course the school was going through many changes to accomodate these younger grades including fund-raising for new playground equipment.
I was kind of glad that it was my younger son's last year there, before moving on the high school. So far I have only gone to meetings at the high school as an interested parent and have not joined the council.
I also pm'd you, Sandra.