While I'm not a big fan of holding excess funds, I'd also be wary of quickly spending ALL these funds on unplanned assets for the existing school. Probably the earliest you could make a new decision and put it in place is 30 days, more likely longer than that. That means whatever you buy only benefits this year's kids for 2-3 months, at most.

I'm not saying not to add any new purchases for this year, but don't simply spend down the balance to avoid sharing the funds.

I'd suggest making sure a defined amount is retained to be split as suggested above and that any new purchases not already in your plan get the feedback and support of all constituents, including those leaving.

A 20k overage? Why not buy some of the active boards now. I still think you need to gift some money to the new elementary school--if the entire overage was raised this year, then that would be my thought. How much are you paying for active boards and are they being mounted? That's an aside for me as we are paying 5.4k per active board system to be permantently mounted in the classroom. Just seems SOOOOOO expensive to me...

d

to play devils advocate that money was raised in good faith to buy active boards for the school...I think most remaining parents are going to say why is there such an overage(20000) why weren't more active boards bought?

I agree completely.

Since those students and teachers probably helped raise the money that you hold in your account, I would completely understand wanting to split the funds. It would certainly help out the fledgling PTO that will hopefully form at the new school. To attempt to make it equitable, I would determine how much the overage is and divide it by the total number of students in your school. That would give you a per student amount. You could then determine the number of students going to the new school and give that per student amount to their new parent group.

I will be the Pres. next year for our elem. Another elementary is opening in August taking half our teachers and students. The current PTO has an overage for this year and wants to take some $ with them from our school account when they go. Thoughts?