Hi I was reading your post and really want to answer. First off you need to have a talk with your principal or your school district's business director. I am a home and school president and a couple of years ago we were asked to bank the student council's funds after talking to the people i listed it was brought to our attention that they needed a seprate account from us. We have a sunshine club that is run by the teacher's for the teacher's it pays for flowers for death's and retirement gifts etc etc. This has nothing to do with us as a H&S or PTA. I suggest you ask the teacher to open a Sunshine Club account and give him the money that is there's to open the account. This should be run by the teachers with the building principal overseeing the finds with the school district overseeing the tax filing at no cost. As for him adding a teacher to the account it should of never happened you need to go to your band with your other teasure and express to them who you are and your titles and at that time you both can remove anyone who should not be signing checks or touching your accounts. It is our policy that the president and teasure are the only ones who can sign a check ( NO EXCEPTIONS). I hope I helped you. Just remember only president and treasure should sign checks and the only money in your account should be Principal funds and H&S or PTA everyone else should have there own accounts seprate from you.

Thanks for your replies. This has been a year of transition for us -the past few years, very little recording of the expenses was done, & no budget was made. I came into a mess lol! We are working on this issue, & have gotten the principal involved. Hopefully a budget amount for the account will help, thanks for that suggestion!

We have a district wide policy that requires the 2 signatures, a check request form before the checks are written. the checks have to be approved by 2 officers other than the one requesting the check. the checks can only be signed by 2 officers not requesting the check.

Surely your district has a policy on PTO/PTA groups.

I think the annual budget for each category is so important as the other person listed.

It seems to me that your PTO needs to have a written annual budget that has been reviewed and approved (with a vote) by the PTO board. Then, if this person exceeds the budge for which he has authorization to draw against, he'll have to answer to the entire board.

At this point, I suggest that you add the Sunshine Fund discussion to the next board meeting. Provide a written record of the expenses (with dates and recipients) this year to date. If there is a budget, verbally compare the expenses to the budget (i.e. 15% overage) for the edification of the other board members, then seek discussion from the board members regarding the purpose of this fund and the future management of it.

During this discussion, clarify with the teacher co-president your understanding of check authorization and ask if he has the same understanding. If he lies by omission and says, "yes", you should then say, "Can you tell us the situation with how Mrs. Jones came to be the secondary signatory on this account? My understanding that the secondary signer is supposed to be Mrs. Smith. How did this come about?"

Many bad deeds can be solved when the bright light of scrutiny from other board members are shined on them.

I am hoping someone will have a suggestion for us. This is my 1st year as an officer of our PTO (Co-Treasurer), & the other Co-Treasurer & I have done alot of work getting the books in order. There was no recordkeeping before us, sigh. As we parents see where the money has gone over the past couple years, we have started to keep better tabs on the expenses, especialy with the economy as it is now.

One area we want to reign in is the teacher Sunshine Fund. Monetary gifts are given for births, deaths etc., & we parents really had no idea how much of our fundraising money was going out. The teacher who is a Co-President has written & approved all checks up until a month ago (we do now require 2 signatures on every check), & he has taken great offense to us not "trusting" him to write the checks alone. So what does he do - he takes another teacher to the bank to get her signature made valid for signing checks. A teacher who is not an officer & has not been to any meetings yet this year at least. So the checks he has been writing the past few days have no Co-Treasurer approval & go against the guidelines that we have in place for Sunshine Fund (we only allow it for certain events, altho we wouldn't mind getting rid of it for good). So this man (who I am entrusting my children's education to!) has basically snubbed his nose at us & taken over the funds. I was honestly thinking today I should just start putting stop pays on all the invalid checks he writes lol! Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!