Thank you for your response, OneandOnly! We are just concerned that the new high school board is trying to take over the money that our current 7th and 8th graders raised last year. We are more than happy to help out, except that this new board won't answer our questions (mainly, "are you forming a PTO for the HS?"). Thanks again!
If you are the middle school and the high school is slowly being added to your school, then the PTO at the high school should be sending money down to this newly formed group. Your Middle school PTO had money raised from your middle school students for their activities. The money raised by the HS students should be split since they had 4 grades that raised money last year, but will only have 3 grades to support this year.
If the PTO's are clearly defined as to what grades they will support, then there is no reason why 2 PTO's can't exist within the same building. You may, however, have issues if you have to share the same facilities or common areas such as the gym, cafeteria, etc. You have to make sure that everyone is fair and one PTO is not hogging all the time.
Fundraisers would be kept separate (but you could coordinate them so if a family with kids in different grades are being sent home duplicate fundraisers) and some events would be kept separate as well. However, you could combine certain activities and you would have to divide the cost based upon the percentage of the students in the school or those attending.
If they wish to only have one PTO, then the PTO should not exist with only parents of 9th grade students. Those parents may not be there next year and its more desirable to have parents of children of various grades involved to maintain consistency and pass along information year to year.
Our public middle school has added a 9th grade class this year and will be adding the rest of the high school grades over the next 3 years (we are now a magnet school and share the name and building). The school name has been modified and is slightly different from our PTO's incorporated name. Our established PTO, which happens to consist of myself and one other dedicated mom, just found out today that a "temporary" board has been assembled by the new 9th grade parents. We are scheduled to meet with this new board soon to discuss the parent group, but feel from several conversations with the new people that the old guard is being pushed out. They will not tell us if they are forming a PTO for our new high school end, or if they are forming a brand new PTO for both the middle and high school. Our principals haven't been much help since they are the ones who "encouraged" this new group of people to form a board. If a new PTO is formed for the high school end only, what is the ethical way to handle their start up costs? My co-volunteer in our PTO and I have no problem giving them a specific sum of money to get started (incorporating fees, etc.), but have no idea exactly how much we might offer. And on the other hand, is there anything from preventing them from starting a competing PTO in the same building?? Any suggestions or experience at this?
