Can someone please explain this to me? I am miffed! As per my earlier post we are allowed to use our kitchen and do not have to deal with kitchen workers at all. If the school owns the kitchen why can't the school allow you to use it?
Why are kitchen employees in between you and your use of the school kitchen?
We have to pay our cafeteria workers if we use the kitchen for anything. But that aside decisions made in executive meetings should have limits on them and we have these written into our bylaws we are only allowed to vote on items for $200.00 or less and are considered regular busness items (things that happen regularly) anything (such as this) would have to be brought to a general meeting. Check your bylaws they made need some updating if there are control issues.
me thinks it was sneaky, too...but, in the future you need to be clear about the use of the kitchen and possible expenses. If someone is an employee of the school, you better make sure that they don't expect to be paid. I still think that if the principal asks you to pay her, you should. You need a good relationship with the principal. I would hope that your principal thought it all out before he/she approached you. Come on everyone, admit it, 4 hours is a long time to cook noodles!! Could many of us even find someone that was willing to work that many hours? Most volunteers want to work a portion of the event and then enjoy the rest of the time with their family. So, do the right thing and pay up and move on...
Whoa--if this person gets paid, she gets paid out of the SCHOOL's budget, NOT the PTO's. As I see it she is a school district EMPLOYEE, if she was there on THEIR behalf then by all means pay her. It seems to me this was done on HER time as a PTO VOLUNTEER, so NO MONEY, especially not from the PTO's budget. For her to think she can do that is sneaky, and not very...nice.
Serendipity--I'm jealous you even HAVE a kitchen. I can't even imagine anything past that!
I am just blown away by this whole topic. I will now consider us very lucky! In our school we use our kitchen when we want and how we want other then when lunch is in session. We have cabinets in our kitchen that are specifically ours and filled with all kinds of kitchen stuff. I had no idea that in other schools you could not use your kitchen and that you had to answer to kitchen staff. It just seems so bizarre to me!
Our school corporation requires us to have a paid food services person on hand in the kitchen to oversee its use, i.e., health issues, cleanliness, etc. We have to pay them time and a 1/2, too. They don't do any of the cooking, but basically oversee use of the equipment, etc. I feel that your principal is right to ask you to pay her if, your principal, feels that she was representing your school corporation. I would ask your principal to be clear as to the policy of using your cafeteria kitchen for future planning of your budgeted event.
