Just a note to add for our school. We do have the tray system but only one child comes down from each class with all the things colleted being PTO stuff, lunch counts, notes for office etc. So these kids would be coming down anyway and it wouldnt be all the students.

Cindy

Well, what works for some won't always work for others, I guess. It works just fine for us...havnen't lost a check yet, in three years of doing this...

I guess a lot would depend on the age of the students...we are an elementary school, and it would be tough to expect k-2 to get that tray concept right...along with having a bunch of kids take time out of their day to make trips to the office....

Not sure this is much different than what you already do, but it might help...

At the teacher luncheon, which occurs the day before school starts, we pass out to each teacher a laminated folder/envelope, approx. 8 1/2 x11 in size, that the teachers are expected to use for transmission of any papers and/or money to PTO's mailbox. PTO reps then empty the envelopes at pickup, and return the envelopes to the teachers box for future use.

This is excatly what our school DOES NOT want. I like what Crew Chief's former school did and hope we can suggest the same. I love the envelope idea and have nice big red ones but we are looking at collecting from 1500 kids for E-books....this could help!

We do something similar to CrewChief. When we have certain events or collections for something we have a orgainizer drawer right in the office. So when the kids each come down from their classrooms in the morning with their cafeteria counts all the pto stuff goes into one bin.
Then the office usually holds it their in their supply office which gets locked. Not too many get lost. But occasionally it has happened.
We also keep a list for who paid for pictures, save the reply forms for events things like that so we can say no we didnt get it as Crew Chief had said. Just to cover our butts. It does seem to be the same offenders though!!! HHHMMM LOL


Cindy

We encourage "checks only" as payment for anything...cash just begs to be taken, IMO...checks only takes away pretty much any chance of impropriety on anyone's part...

At my last school, there were trays in the office labeled "yearbook", "spirit wear", etc. It was the students responsibility to get the right envelopes into the right trays.

For big, one time events (such as raffle tickets or Fall Fundraiser) we simply had a PTO table set up in the main foyer that was manned by volunteers. The students stopped by the table on the way to homeroom.

We had many instances of "lost" money and it just isn't fair to lay that burden on the teachers. Rarely were checks lost, mostly cash.

I know I'll get a lot of feedback from the Heresay Police on this one, but often it seemed that some students took their own parent's cash, tossed out the order form and then threw the biggest fit when the items came in and they didn't get one, swearing they turned in their order. I'm not one who's quick to judge but if the same students have the same issue over and over again, well......

As a side note - When we distribute items such as spirit wear and yearbooks to the classrooms, we give each teacher a list of students from their class who should recieve an item. This helps the teacher when a student claims they should have gotten something but didn't. They can simply say, "Well, your name isn't on the list so your order wasn't recieved." Then the parent can follow up with the appropriate PTO committee.