Not sure but I'm sure I'll be the one that gets figure it out as my oldest is in seventh grade and my youngest is 14 months old! It would be something I would feel comfortable talking to my current Principal about and something she would not have an issue with to draw up papers (maybe even a legal contract aside the by-laws) stateing how our money is to be handled.
I did learn this weekend (and this has been years in the works) our charter school wants to separate itself from the school district. This is a whole other topic to post (and I may when I have more info) but this would be a good time to be thinking about it!
Oops--sorry mykidsmom--didn't mean to offend. Guess that was a poor choice of words on my part.
The point I was trying to make was that it seems like many PTOs that have problems on this board have them because their principals or school districts have "too much" say over what is done with the parents money, either because they lack bylaws altogether, don't follow their bylaws because they are inadequate in some fashion, and/or the group lacks independence. Seems like usually the best way of solving that is to make sure you have an independent group with a strong set of bylaws.
Even though we are way OT at this point, I'm kind of curious--do you know what the reasoning was for having a separate set of bylaws without going the extra step of incorporating and creating a different legal entity? What you have works for you now, which is great--but what if you ended up with a "principal from he--," like those that seem to pop up on these boards at times?
In my opinion, YES, you do have a PTO. A PTO (or whatever acronym selected) is a parent group with specific goals towards helping the school and students.
Whether or not the group raises money, how much they keep in an account, who dispenses funds is irrelevant.
Hnag on here, our account has alwys been held by the school but WE have say on how the money is spent. Okay, we do share the school tax id number and our account is audited by the school district with the school's book and we are not incorporated BUT this is what the parents taht formed our PTO agreed to and it works. It can work. We are very comfortable with the fact we have no checkbook but we also never have more than a few thousand in our account because the school raises it's own money.
We have by-laws, the same moms that do everything and (very fortunatly) have a Principal that is happy to have us but doesn't depend on us.
<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by amthrof2: I feel that this PTO is in real jeopardy and wonder what can be done to stop this. Any suggestions? <hr></blockquote>
Actually, what I was thinking when I was reading your post was that you didn't even really have a true PTO anyway--you have some people doing volunteer work for the school system. Do you have enough support from parents to actually incorporate/get bylaws together and form an independent group that does what the parents want to do?
I have received an update from the treasurer (school secretary) she has decided to motion that all the money be turned over to the school district out of the PTO's account (mind we are not incorporated nor do we have a tax id #). Therefore, the funds raised by this PTO would remain in the control of the Principal and the treasurer. No one could question the expenses. Positive on one hand the school district would perform the audit. Negative on the other that only the principal would be able to access the money as she saw fit throughout the year and the account would be frozen in April.
As for the petty cash. There would be no checks and balances on that since there are no formal reports on non-vendor sales. So the situation could still continue that all that fundraising would be on the side and filtered through petty cash.
I feel that this PTO is in real jeopardy and wonder what can be done to stop this. Any suggestions?
Now about the taxi cab situation. I will be calling the state board of education about this on Monday.
