I hear ya, anonymousbychoice,
Previously, our Board mostly spent the PTO money on teachers which indirectly got to the kids--also for us, very little actually went directly to the kids. Thank goodness, this upcomoing year's Board consists of ALL who want to see more going directly to the kids.
One thing that I tried was to enlist people( teachers AND parents) of like thinking and have them ask those tough questions in meetings--i.e. just exactly where is the money going? Why is it being allocated that way? We had a person on Board whose sole goal seemed to be to have a high bank balance, constant fundraising with very little going out--even to teachers. Another sticking point with this person was, if a teacher wasn't a member of PTO( regardless of how many students in her class had parent members), she couldn't expect to receive ANY PTO monies for ANYthing. This person had lost sight of what PTO's real goals were. Give people enough rope and they WILL hang themselves.
I agree that many PTO's are asked to fund things that should be covered by the school district, but it's far easier to just deal with things "in house". We instituted a form procedure that required a teacher to submit their request to the principal first for funding, then if the principal couldn't fund it, it was passed on to PTO. In every case, it was taken care of by PTO. We also have in place a fund for the principal to use in addition to her own budget to cover small amounts. When we found continuing things were asked for each year, we just added them to our budget as a given.
Keep plugging, it will eventually pay off for the kids. This person got tired of being challenged and decided not to run again this year. Hopefully, your situation will change for the better also. And, thank you on behalf of your school for all you've done and will continue to do--whether or not anyone there thanks you, the KIDS KNOW who's working for them!!( I hope they'll reconsider dropping PTO--they'll soon realize that it takes a combined effort, teachers & parents) to accomplish anything.)

We spend a great deal of our money on the children - not including all the instructional money. We assist the school by donating money to the field trips for the kids whose families really can't afford it. We have several school parties for good behavior and for perfect attendance each semester. For the first year we gave all of our Second Graders a skating field trip due to good marks on their TAKS benchmarks. (TAKS benchmarks - Texas Standardized Testing really begins in 3rd grade, but Second graders get a benchmark [practice test] that does go on their permanent record). They also got one snack and a drink. No cost to any second grade student. We hold a carnival each year and give prizes and there is no charge whatsoever for the kids to attend the carnival. We have many other activities that benefit the kids and I would say between regular school educational items, parties, etc, we spend about 75% of our funds to the kids.

I was wondering how much money you spent directly on the kids in your school? I am not counting paying for field trips and giving the teacher's money. This year we made almost $8000 and have only spent approx. $50 on the kids directly. And that wasn't even all the kids. We spent $30 for the kids who walked in a parade we were in, that was about 30 kids. Then we spent $15 on candy canes at Christmas. We spent the remainder on misc. things such as a few boxes of valentines cards for kids who couldn't afford them, I think that was $7. Plus we supplied some juice to a few classes who didn't have any for parties, I would say that was $5. This was a mostly new board this year with 2 of us from past years. This board didn't seem interested in raising that much money. They were happy with a $200 candy bar sells when we had done $2000 in the past. Most of the $8000 came from a fundraiser I did in the fall. I put a lot of work into it and got $6000. Then the staff spending began. You should know that the 2 remaining members from the past years were parents, while the rest was staff. We had no other choice, PTO has become a nuisance in our school, and nooone wanted to participate. So, we spent $500 on janitorial supplies that I felt weren't needed because the old stuff worked just as well and was covered by the district. We gave the teachers $2500 first semester and approx. $1000 second. I have no problem with that expense. We helped with field trips. Still, no problem, but the district does cover most of the expense, and what they didn't several teachers held their own fundraiser to cover it. In the past, we spent approx. $1500 buying the kids a really cool item for field day. We have done water bottles and hats. This year the stingy board bought generic Pop-Ice at a total of $20. We did that too, on top of the cool gift. We will be ending with a balance of over $5000. Couldn't we have spent some of it on the kids or have I just become so cynical to this whole deal? I should say that they voted to get rid of PTO due to no interest. We will have a generic club type deal instead. It will be run through the school council run by, you guessed it, the staff. I will save that for another forum. I just need some input into what you do for the kids who's parents work tirelessly on these fundraisers only to never see what we did with the money.