Wow, that's a tough one. I would first advise you to check your PTO by-laws. You might even want to revise your by-laws to include these types of issues.

Whatever is best for your school as a whole should be the main focus, and that involves everyone working as a team. If one group doesn't have enough funds, then another group should step in to help. The school and the children should not suffer if one group doesn't want to share their wealth. Good luck to you.

Our school has a situation. Three years ago, PTO did all fundraising for the school and the librarian ran one book fair a year for library. Our school has grown with new groups and activities. It's a wonderful thing BUT some of the groups are doing fundraising, too - Student Council, Earth Day penny wars, Librarian has added another book fair. There's a lot more hands out now. Our fundraising dollars have dropped because of it. Our expenses have gone up to cover the groups that don't do fundraising - Newspaper club, Rainbows Program, Inner-school mail system, Computer Technologies Department. Would it be out of our bounds to request that some of these new groups absorb some of the old bills? To ask how and what they plan on spending their funds on? The Earth Day Committee is sitting on over $1000 from last year that they don't know what they are going to do with. Scholastic Readers cost our group over $2200, would it be out of bounds to request that the second book fair fund that expense?

Our PTO funds are accounted for to the penny, how much and what it's allocated for. It's public record. Should these other programs be required to share their budgets, too?