Question: Scholarships for field trips

I was just voted in as the PTO president for the next school year and a question came up regarding scholarships for student going on field trips. Is it alright for the PTO to ask the parents of the student to volunteer their time on our PTO events for the scholarship.

Asked by kdwhites

Answers:

Advice from PTO Today

Rose H writes:
I would guess some groups might do something like that, but, technically if you are asking parents to essentially help in exchange for their children going on the field trip, then it really isn't a scholarship. I'd say you have two different issues here. One is if your group wants to provide scholarships as part of its mission. There's no right or wrong answer. The second issue is if you want to offer parents this idea of volunteering in exchange for their child's fee (regardless of scholarship status). That sounds like a great idea! As far as scholarships are concerned, I recall with the PTO I was involved in that we covered field trip expenses for those students who couldn't afford it. These were local field trips with per-student costs of no more than $20. We would ask families to contact the principal to let her know if they needed help and then the principal would tell us how many students needed coverage -- We wouldn't even know who those students were. But then, we were in a school district where other schools could afford to coverage all field trip costs, something we simply couldn't do. So, you just need to figure out what's the right fit for your group.