Question: Paying "volunteers"

Currently our school has a Spanish program built into the 5th - 8th grade curriculum. 1st - 4th grade receives Spanish from volunteers using a different curriculum. A request has been received by our PTO to reimburse some of the 1st - 4th grade volunteers for their time/gas mileage ($10 an hour); the argument being that they spend many outside hours preparing for class. PTO has many wonderful volunteers who do not receive compensation for their time and talent. Has anyone else had to deal with a request like this before? We wouldn't mind helping pay for materials (which we have done in the past) but paying for "staff"/volunteers doesn't seem like something that we should be doing.

Asked by boberkrom

Answers:

Community Advice

gjcoram writes:
Since these volunteers are providing specialized help (not everyone speaks Spanish) on an ongoing basis, rather than a few hours for this event or that fundraiser, I think they are fundamentally different from other volunteers. Are they teaching in the school, during the school day? It sounds to me like they should be staff paid by the school district.

Community Advice

boberkrom writes:
They are not teaching in the school during the school day. They are mostly parents who volunteer; one of the volunteers isn't a parent and does travel about 15 miles to teach. We are a private school, but still seems like something the school board should fund. It just feels like we would be setting some sort of precedent by doing this. Ultimately it will come to a vote, but I wanted to be able to give some insight from PTO perspectives.