I am steamed about something and want to find out what we can do.

Our school had a PTA until 2 years ago, when someone on the PTA took off with the checkbook over the summer and wrote about $3000 worth of checks for personal expenses. No one knew until Sept when the family did not return and the PTA account was empty. She was not even a signor on the account, but no one did anything except try to get her to pay back the money, to no avail.

At the same time, most parents decided they wanted to switch to a PTO, so we thought it would be a good time to get a fresh start. We opened a whole new non-profit org, set up with a tax ID, etc... filed all the appropriate paperwork. In the meantime, the principal was on the phone with the PTA to see if our insurance from the prior year covered the theft. They said we were no longer active so they would not help us. We voted (I know, it's a separate group) to pay the fee to become active again (whatever the minimum # of parents and their dues are, around $215). We paid the PTA their money and they said they would get right on recovering our money. Well, we waited all year and did not hear back from them. They called the principal again this week and said they had our money, but since we were no longer active they could not send it to us. They also told us they had received the money right after we became active LAST YEAR, but the person who had been working on the case had left and no one knew to send us the money. Now they want us to pay another $215 to become active for another year so they can send us the money. The principal sent another check this week, but I told him it was unethical for the PTA to sit on our funds and wait for our activation to expire so that we have to pay yet again. By the way, they were steamed that we did not renew the PTA last year and went ahead and did the PTO thing instead. They harassed the principal constantly telling us we were making a big mistake.

The thing is, we're a title 1 school with a lot of low income families and hardly anyone participates anyway. It's hard enough to get them to join the parents group, but to then ask them to pay a fee just to "join" is insulting. They'd rather stay home anyway. This is why we decided to become a PTO. More parents participate now than ever. And when we were a PTA we never did anything with the state PTA or receive any benefits from them, so it was a waste of money to us. We wanted to be free to do what we wanted.

Now that the principal sent the check, hopefully they will send us the $3000 that they are holding for us. But I'm really miffed. I am tempted to stop payment on the check since I am one of the treasurers, but of course we're all thinking that money could benefit the kids and that's the only reason we're doing this.

My question is, can we file a complaint and get our $215 activation fee back? It's just not right that they had the money and essentially waited until our membership expired to tell us they had it.

It just seems as if the PTA is stealing money from our students, 63% of which are considered low income. It's not fair to them.

Kathryn