We use the school's copier and pay for our own paper. We buy 2 cases of colored paper at the beginning of the year. All of our letters, fliers and info go home on yellow paper. It identifies our group. Our copier situation is lame, as we can use it, but only when no one is in the teacher's lounge. Most of the time, it is after school when we get a chance to use it. We have night meetings off-site and they let us use their machine, so we run off copies during our meetings.

We use the school's copiers and do not pay for either the copies made nor the paper. However, when we want to send out something on colored paper not provided by the school system, we will purchase it ourselves. We also provide the paper when we do large projects like the student directories and the cookbook that we are putting together.

One thing that helps us, is turning used ink cartridges in at Office Depot for free paper. This way we are helping to save the environment as well as helping our budget. [img]smile.gif[/img] Since we buy a lot of our supplies from OD, I don't feel that we are taking advantage of their program.

Its a grey area definately (sp?) our PTA purchased copiers 4 school and does supply paper and our own paper 2 school- so we have used and swappped for used paper.
As long as its agreed by both (It doesnt benefit PTA/PTO members financialy- ie VP own paper company that school/PTA/PTO buys from) and is out in the open, I see no problem with it. Its being used to benefit the school thru the PTA/PTO

We use the school paper & copier. We pay a fee per copy. The money goes directly to our elementary budget then, not the District General Fund. Like LuvMyKids, we have a code which needs to be used on the system to track users & numbers of copies. We tend to put 3 - 4 notes to a page and cut so we're making as little as possible. We also try to get as much as possible on our website & our PTO newsletter.

Our school does have controls in place for making copies. The machine requires that you enter a code before it will let you do anything and we only give our PTO code to a VERY limited number of people(only those who will be making flyers for events or sending out a newsletter). The school also allots only a certain number of copies per month and that is programmed into the copier. The copier is also right by the office staff, so they keep an eye on what's being done too.

If I ever found out someone was doing personal stuff on there, I'd make them pay for it and then only have one person with the code!

We also try to be as conservative as possible. We combine things together so only one note goes out and try to get everything we can into the newsletter so there aren't a million notes going out, we do double sided notes instead of two page and cut notes down in size so we can get multiple notes on a page(then cut apart). I've also taken things to a print shop to have them done when they were elaborate things(like pamphlets)-our AEA has a great print shop and it's very reasonable.

Believe me, we keep in mind that it is the taxpayer's money we're spending and we are as frugal as possible.

[ 07-13-2006, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: LUVMYKIDS ]

As long as no one person profits, or uses the school facilities for personal use, its probably OK to use school equipment and paper, if mgmt agrees.

Kind of like the questions about taking home the leftover potluck food, isnt it.....using copying machine is fine, maybe using the paper is OK too, and little things such as that of 'no consequence'.

Its when (and IF) folks start taking bigger and bigger 'liberties' that things get a bit messy. Where do you draw the line.