With so many buget cuts these days, our PTO's are taking more and more of the financial responsibility for all kinds of things. Turn it into a positive thing and make an event with it. Each spring and fall, schedule a planting day to include parents and kids. Instead of using the day just to spend your hard earned funds, use the day to fundraise too! Sell flowers, potted plants, bulbs, gardening supplies, and so on. Hey, you've got the captive audience and I'd bet most of them are interested in plants and the like. Post signs to attract passersby too. Turn a drain on your funds into a profitable day.
For tips on having a
school fundraiser
with gardening supplies check out FundraiserHelp.com. They don't really sell anything, just really great advice.
All of our prinicipals receive a stipend for maintenance and how they spend it depends on their individual school needs. That varies from year to year. Our PTO however, supplements building maintenance and enhancement for those things we think are worth the expense or will add a nicer touch--like large flower planters in the front of the school, fresh mulch even though technically it may not be called for, and upgrades to our quadrangles. Our transformation of one into an outdoor classroom (which you can see on brentpto.com) was huge and we are planning the same transformation of another of the 3 quads into a science quad. We approach this uniquely I think however, in that all of our "dues" are targeted toward what we call our "sun fund" or savings for a sunny day. That way no one year of students are targetting raising money for mulch or tulips etc. It seems to go over well and right now we have over 6k in dues (from the past 3 years) for the science quad....so I hope after this year, with a slight supplement, we can get going with the transformation....
NO way does our pto pay for bldg maintenance. that is the district respoinsibility.
we have a gardening committee that volunteers supplies (dontated also from whoever wants to donate, butnot do the planting or pruning) and time to beautify the grounds, but the basics are covered by the district.
we just add a little TLC becuause we have a lot of helpful green thumb parents that like to this kind of work.
sometime the scouts do a gardening project at schooll, to earn a reward or badge.
You can make this a school wide project so parents are not held totally responsible. Kids love to plant flowers and its good for them to learn about bushes, etc. Have them help out on Earth Day where every class has an assignment and parents are there to assist the teacher in accomplishing the task. Try and get a local landscaper &/or nursery to give you a discount on plants & flowers in exchange for advertising. (thank them in a flyer that is sent home to every household in the school)
You local Boy Scouts can be called to see if they need any community service projects so the boys can earn badges.
Check with your local churches. Our middle school students need to perform 5 hours of community service in order to qualify for Confirmation in the catholic church.
Also, your local High School should have a National Honor Society, Key Club or agriculture club that would also be able to assist you and earn community service mention on their college applications.
The PTO would supply the plants (HS may also have items to supply/donate) and supplies and then your volunteers would come in on a specific date and get the job done in one day. Check with your local community garden clubs as well. They may have suggestions on low maintenance plants & bushes that can be used to keep the work to a minimum.
Our town does not pay for the upkeep around the school, it's just not in there budget. Our PTO pays a landscape company to come in and clean up twice a year, we do the rest. Since the town does not pay for it we waited hoping that someone would complain(other the the PTO) and they would have to fix it; the longer we waited the worst it looked. We spend almost $4300.00 out of our budget to clean up around the school grounds. We had parents donate plants and we made it look nice. Since then we spend around $ 1000.00 per year for the up keep. I hope this helps.
While our district of 20 schools does have a maintenance dept, if your school district is experiencing state budget cuts such as ours, they only perform basic maintenance, ie: cutting the lawn, trimming trees.
Our school's PTO has a budget that is currently being used to help maintain school grounds. In previous years when economies were better, our budget was around $1000. We have established a student club for landscaping maintenance that is supervised by parent volunteers in our upper el grades. Groups meet on a weekly basis working in beds removing debris and weeds, replenishing mulch, planting flowers, watering entrance flower pots… The funds are used to purchase mulch, plants, tools, garden gloves, and we have created a butterfly garden. We have held plant sales to help fund this budget. Our students love being part of the Beautification team and take a lot of pride in the job they do. It has been a great way to get students involved and learn respect for their school. The biggest benefit is that the grounds stay in much better shape in-between Maintenance visits.
