Question: funding

should elementary school pto funds be given to a high school prom function? i feel it should have gone to a school wide vote since none of this money is going where the parents think it is !

Asked by Anonymous

Answers:

Advice from PTO Today

Craig writes:
How much money? I could see, under certain circumstances, donating some funds to help out the high school. If your budget is $20,000, donating $100 or $200 as a special circumstance seems OK, and I wouldn't call that a violation of trust. Donating $2,000 would be another story.

Community Advice

hollasa writes:
How was the decision made? Was it made at a general PTO meeting? And why on earth is an elementary school sending money to a high school prom?

Community Advice

mac281 writes:
at a regular pto meeting the chair person from post prom was in attendance, she had asked for a donation from our board. There was a budget of $250 for this, but without a vote the board gave $500.00. That, in my opinion is taking away from the children of our school. There was no explanation as to why they doubled the amount.

Community Advice

hollasa writes:
Why not bring a few people to the next meeting, and make a motion to not donate $ to the high school?

Community Advice

kacompt writes:
Do the high school students donate any of their time to the elementary school functions? For example do they help decorate for special events, run booths at carnivals, play band insturments to entertain at partys, come to school and read to the kids? This should be taken into consideration.

Advice from PTO Today

Craig writes:
Great point, kacompt.

Community Advice

AngelJo writes:
Our PTO's bylaws specifically state that our money is used for the students in K-6th grade. If we wanted to contribute money to a high school project, a vote of the general assembly would need to be taken to approve that.

Community Advice

Debbieomi writes:
For several years, our PTO donated $100 (of a $14,000 budget) to our Senior Parent's Assoc for a gift basket to be given away during Senior Lock Down on graduation night. We did it as a way of getting our name out there even more. We started getting hit up by the all the sports teams, cheer, band to sponsor their different fundraisers, so we added it to the bylaws that any "charitable" contribution had to benefit only the kids we sponsored, pre-k through 5th. We then started giving the $100 to our local rec center/ice rink to help defray the costs of third grade skating lessons. These were for all 100+ third graders and ran for nine weeks. That is more in-line with helping our own kids out.