I never thought about the responsibility of being an employer. As to whether or not we should let the district take on that responsibility, they wont. They have not this far anyway. And they generally will not do for one school what they do not do for all schools. Maybe it is more a matter of the principal using funds to pay for such a person. Maybe our district leaves it up to the school, but then the school must make a sacrifice elsewhere. So, I suppose it would be possible for our PTO to work with the principal and fund the position. I would recommend doing it year by year, however. And having the money to pay for the position for the full year before hiring someone and then raising funds each year to pay for the following year.
I just did not know if it was a legal issue.
We are a title 1 (schoolwide) school and are the lowest performing and highest % of low income in our district and the school will not bring back the all day kinder program unless they can bring it back district wide. Evem then, it's last priority for funds. Since cutting the kinder to half day last year, this year's first graders are reading much lower than ever before. It is really obvious that the cut program has hurt the kids.
The question is: should you? It's a fairly significant step.
Some issues:
1. your first hire requires that you become much more official with a lot of legal and record-keeping: payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, 1099s or W2s, employer liability. Your district or school is already doing these things -- might it be easier to work with the district to fund the position but have district take on all employer responsibilities?
2. Whether you hire yourself or fund the hire, is that really where you want to go? There's an active debate about where parent-moneys should go (where does district responsibility kick in?), and hiring/funding staff is usually pretty far on the aggressive side of the spectrum.
I would love for our PTO to be able to use funds to hire teachers assistants or teacher's aides. We currently have no teachers aides and I don't see it in the school budget and the kids are suffering. I'm thinking that if we can pull together enough funds to hire 1 teachers aide to be shared amongst the different classes that would be a tremendous help. I know a PTA cannot hire staff, but I'm wondering if a PTO can? I know one difference between a PTA and a foundation is that a foundation can hire staff. We are currently set up as a PTO.
