Thanks for the information you provided! We are scheduling a meeting with the principal and board members for next week so I hope we can sit down and figure out what is going on with these issues. Unfortunately our new principal has no interpersonal skills with the parents....she is wonderful with the kids, but talks down to adults. Should be an interesting meeting.
With a PTO any number of relationships is possible with the school. The PTO may be very independent with the principal serving as a minor advisor, the principal might be a major partner, the PTO may be more of committee under the control of the Principal - or any variation in between.
Communication is the key, so everyone knows up front what the expectations are and whose role is what. In my previous elementary school we had fundraisers:
1) owned by the PTO where teachers helped promote and collect envelopes of forms/money from students and PTO made all decisions, ran the event, deposited the money.
2) owned by the school where the PTO had no role
3) owned by the school where the PTO provided volunteers to organizer, count money, distribute but the school made the decisions and kept the proceeds
All of these worked for us because we had a good partnership and it was clear up front who did what and where the money was going.
It's unfortunate your principal has not been clear about what she wants and how she hopes things will be organized. You do need to have the discussion as to how she thinks this will work? Who owns the fundraiser? Where are the funds going?
We are a new school (2nd year) with major PTO issues. Last year we had more of an informal PTO with 3 parents who did all of the work. The Principal did not attend any of our meetings and she picked all of the fundraisers (much to our dismay). This year we have a new Principal who attends all of our meetings. We have a PTO board that consists of a President, Treasurer, Secretary and a Teacher Liason. The Vice President quit with only an email as a resignation. One day our President gets a phone call from the Principal's secretary to let us know the fundraising forms are in....What??? We did not authorize a fundraiser. Apparently the Principal signed a contract over the summer. Fine...we did the fundraiser with a company we worked with last school year who was very unprofessional and did not help the PTO in any way to make the fundraiser a success.
The PTO then decides that we are no longer going to deal with this company and during a meeting in September and a meeting in October the PTO mentions that we are no longer going to deal with said company and we will use XXXX and have a great fundraiser in the Spring. No comment from Principal except she would like to know the dates.
Principal is now stating she has not agreed to a fundraiser and that the school might be under contract with the initial company who we used last year/this winter.
PTO was never informed of any contract. None of our PTO members have signed a contract with the company the Principal is referring to....if a contract was signed it was done by the Principal alone without any acknowledgement by the PTO. However, the PTO has signed an agreement with the new company that we have chosen for our fundraiser in the Spring.
Again, we are a new PTO with only a handful of members.....we are trying to figure out who is in the right in this situation. Since the PTO did not agree to or sign a contract over the summer we feel we do not need to organize and hold this fundraiser through the PTO (if a contract was signed by the Principal).
Please, any thoughts would be very much appreciated.
