Whether or not the principal agrees with the expenditure, the caterer needs to be paid. That is just wrong. He did the work, he has every right to be paid. I would go to the district over this, because the caterer has legal recourse here.

You raised the money, you should have complete control of it. And you need to have control of your own check book. But if you are using the school's EIN number and don't have your own and/ or your own account, legally you have no control over the money. My advice--get your own EIN and your own bank account and put all of the money you raise from now on in it. I would not give any principal who would act in such an unethical manner one ounce of control over my PTO's money.

We are a new PTO last year we were only a PO. So I guess you can say we are finally moving forward. Our last Princpal stopped our PTA. However, we have a new principal who is telling our organization what we are aloud to spend our money on. Long story short we used a caterering company and bought lunch for our custodial staff for helping us throughout the year. One of our members father has a caterering company and was able to supply the lunch for us at a very discounted rate (Approx. $100). The Vice Principal was aware of the luncheon and approved it. The PTO signed off on the check to pay the caterering company and was told that it would be mailed out. A whole summer later & the payment was never sent. We were told that the Principal stopped the check from being mailed saying that it was a conflict of interest. Now my question is how much control as a PTO do we have over the money that we work so hard to raise. What are our rights? If I go to the school district what would be the appropriate steps I should take to address our issues? Very Frustrated!