I'm just getting a chance to read this and our school and PTO must be rare as our books are kept by BOTH the PTO and our school. there are two people that look after the books and the school audimaticly audits the PTO books with theirs quaterly. You are doing the right thing! How can we teach our children not to steal if it's okay for this mom to kept THEIR money for herself. Hang in there!

Saab
As per your bylaws, arent your books audited every year. That should be a yes, for all Ptos. and a monthly account should be presented also. And I agree with Kaylee you should prosecute, she broke the law and the worst of all trust of alot of people. Dont second guess youselves. PROSECUTE

I sympathize with your plight. Not only did a trusted member of your group steal from you and the school, you now feel put in a position of Good Guy/Bad Guy. Too many times women want to be nice and quietly slip issues aside. This is not one of those issues. I applaud your decision to prosecute. This is the only right thing to do. For future reference, my PTO has 2 signing levels for some expenses and we have a financial update at each meeting. This was started to help new members of the group see where our hard works goes but it also keeps all financial matters above board.
Good Luck with your case. Stay strong in your resolution to see this through justly.

Saab - as an afterthought, I wanted to let you know that not only do we get a monthly balance of receipts and disbursements from our treasurer we also have an end of the year audit. If you are interested, I would be happy to email you a copy of what one looks like for next year. We comprise a committee usually around 3 to 5 members and the treasurer. The treasurer does not sit on the committee she is just present to answer any questions they may have. The audit committee gets ALL of the financial records for the year (i.e. bank statements, bills with paid receipts, check ledger etc) and all is reviewed and fine tooth combed and if all is in order the auditing committee completes this report to present to the membership. If you are interested in a copy of this report as an example to show your board, please let me know and I will be more than happy to email you a copy.
Kaylee

I am very sorry that this happened to your school. I agree with your decision to press charges. It is a lot of money.
As the new president, you should be able to
bring some new ideas to your school.
The next treasurer should be accountable for his/her actions. A monthly balance should be presented at each PTO meeting. Our treasurer shows an entire balance sheet of income and expenses. We are lucky. Our tresurer keeps the checkbook and she is the only one who is authorized to write them. She has been very honest.
Perhaps your new treasurer could show the
bank statements at your meetings.
I hope you will be able to overcome the problems. Try to remember why we volunteer for PTO.---"the children". They should be our first priority.

Thank you Kaylee! I will pass your message on to the rest of our board. We all need a lot of encouragement right now. We have spent the last two weeks working with the police to put together a case against her. The prosecutor has agreed to take the case, so an arrest will be made soon. This women has two children and a wonderful husband who do not know what she has done yet. We feel very bad for them and hope that we can be there to help them through this mess.
This women spent the last two years taking money from a concession stand that we run, fund raisers and from carnival money. She would take money before it ever went into the PTO account. She would deposit only enough to pay bills. In the end of last year she did not even pay bills. When we checked the mail in the first of August we found a stack of unpaid bills with over due notices and finance charges.
We now relize what mistakes we made which allowed this women to do something like this. She had complete control over the check book and opened all the mail. She was working in the school as a par-a-pro so it was easy for her to make sure no one else saw the bills or the bank statements.
The bottom line was, we TRUSTED her and thought we had no reason to second guess anything that she did.
So please let this be a warning to other PTO's, put safegaurds in place before something as terrible as this happens in your school!