We don't buy the teachers Christmas gifts from the PTO as we feel it isn't the best use of the PTO monies. I know most of our teachers are overwhelmed at Christmas time with gifts from individual students. We do however give each teacher a holiday card with a small gift that was donated to us from our Fall Fundraising company. The cards are also donated.
At our school, we do buy christmas gifts for the staff. We allow them to choose gift certificates from the scrip program. We all benefit from this. The teachers get $25 to use and the support staff get $15. We do not give them start up money in the beginning of the school year, we don't give them classroom money either so we can do this.
In response to christmas gifts. what we do is we buy gifts for the classrooms. we ask the teachers (wish list) what they would like for the classroom we have a certain amount per classroom that the ptg puts in the budget to do so and we have a chairperson that shops and delivers these gifts to the rooms. they are usually games, puzzles,and things of that sort.
Just to affirm Marions response. I think most parents would consider this too much. A teacher appreciation event is certainly appropriate. We have purchased a discount box of Happy Holiday type cards and attached a candy cane and put them in their mail boxes before winter break. (The card would have been enough).
No. (we don't do anything like that anyway. As a parent I feel money shouldn't be used to buy teachers presents, although we do spend some money on Teacher Appreciation week for lunch.)