Honestly I have never heard of the principal signing checks. Our PTO is to be kept completely seperate from the school, and she has no part in signing anything. I agree with your first instinct. (sorry!) [img]redface.gif[/img] )
First and foremost...thank you all VERY much for taking the time to reply to my question. I think that I personally would feel best with a compromise....having the principal be a possible signor on the checks. They are two signature checks...so I'm going to suggest that we include one or more of the executive members of the PTO as potential signers, too. You have been a fabulous amount of help me to...I greatly appreciate it. I'm still going to do some research around our area to see if any of the other schools are set up this way or if the district office has a policy regarding this. I'll keep checking to see about any additional replies as well. Thanks again so much. This was REALLY bothering me and you have helped me "calm down" a bit!!
Well, get a load of this! Our "school director", he doesn't want to be called the Principal, wouldn't let us have any of the funds we raised last year to start this year. So since we are a newly formed PTO at a high school atlernative school, we opened our own account and we have co-treasurers who are on the account and my self as president, everyone wanted me on the account too. None of the teachers wanted to be on it, because of the conflicts on the other account. Our director has not been present at any of our meetings or fund raisers, but he has a teacher who has tried to sabatash everything we have tried to do. We have several active parents and help from only two and a half teachers, we are in the process of writing our by laws and we will be okay and so will our kids.....the one teacher who is the directors' spy, has been hateful to the kids that belong to the executive counsel ever since we elected officers, we elected her secretary, but she wanted president, she still has spent money that we made last year from the old account to by pens for graduation $160.00 worth and she never asked any of us about it..I only found out yesterday about, isn't that stealing. Well, we have many problems with this teacher and our director and I could sure use some ideas on how to handle this. Thanx
My PTO is outside the norm on this one. Per our school district the PTO checkbook is with the school's general account. HANG ON!! We fill out our request or submit the bill, Accouts Payable issue the checks and whomever signs the checks at school does so. Our account is always balanced, we are always able to recieve a print out when we need it and it is impossible or anyone to take from our account with all the restrictions the school district has established to protect us. So the Prez and Treas. sign the requests and our Principal has nothing to do with our money (she wants it that way too).
Please understand this works for us and we couldn't change if if we wanted to--the district has spoken!
There have been a few other posts on this. We, like many others, require two signatures on all checks. We generally have 3 authorized signers (Treasurer, President, Principal). The Principal is the most frequent co-signer as he's easily found and usually available. (All our officers work at daytime jobs and do PTO during spare time.)
Absolutely, positively WE control the account. Our treasurer physically keeps the checkbook and we initiate all checks. The only exceptions have been a couple of times we asked the principal to orginate a check for a reason valid at the time.
Do you require two signatures on the checks? If so, and assuming you have two other people authorized to sign, then it shouldn't be a problem. The principal can sign for convenience, but cannot control unilaterally the pursestrings -- either by opening them up or closing them tight.
Our principal can't sign on our checks, and doesn't want to. But if you have a good working relationship, then I would think it can work.
