This is not the first post that my alarm bells have gone off on about principals and PTO funds. I hate to put it like this and have it seemed aimed only at you, but ....

What the heck are you all doing letting the principal handle your funds for in the first place???

Your Treasurer and President are legally on the hook for every penny you all have, collect and distribute!

The principal is but ONE officer of your board, not the ONLY officer. If your principal is the sole source for issuing checks, making payments, has sole access to any PTO account, well enjoy the audits and the fines you will PERSONALLY have to pay!

Two, thats two persons, two human beings, two people TWO - 2 - should be required to dispose of any money in any account, except petty cash limits, which needs the appoval of a board officer - you have set petty cash limits right>?

A financal report (full) should be distributed to every board officer at every meeting (which ought to be regularily scheduled at least once a month).

Your problem seems to not be unquie, and I hope others read this and get control of their own PTOs.

Your profile says you are from Texas. In this state, The Public Information Act provides a mechanism for citizens to inspect or copy government records. (i.e., Open Records requests)

I'm not a lawyer, but would expect that a public school district would fall under this set of rules.

Here's a web site from the Texas Office of the Attorney General. In particular, read the FAQ.

www.oag.state.tx.us/opinopen/opengovt.shtml

A couple points from me. 1) Be careful what you say and to whom. You don't want to endanger anyone's reputation needlessly. 2) Personally, I'd probably just start with an informal request. We made a similar request to our Principal last year, just because we wanted to understand more about how the funds were used. He cheerfully brought an accounting of his Activity Account to our next meeting and shared it with us.

On the other hand, if you want your name to stay out of it, you could ask a 3rd party to make the request. Note - the government entity is not allowed to ask WHY you want the information.

At least in our district, the school's accounts are audited by an internal auditor. There are a lot of controls in place. Also, our principal wouldn't have direct access to the PTO funds.

[ 09-18-2003, 04:43 PM: Message edited by: JHB ]

Hello all,
I'm feeling ill about a discovery I made recently at my children's school. Without going into detail, I think the school Principal is using our account to mishandle other funds. I was just wondering if there was anywhere I could view the schools financial records. That would help me verify me suspisions, before I speak to anyone else about this.