I never been in this situation, but I would like to speak from a spectators viewpoint. As a PTO Prez myself, I am only responsible for delegating the operations of the organization. The President should N E V E R be involved in any money transactions or financial distribution; he is only responsible for setting the budget,Specifying where funds are to be allocated, and inform members of PTO's financial standing. This is more of a job for your PTO's Auditing Committee, so I just don't see where the Prez would have any doing with financial irresponsibility.

The Treasurer, on the other hand,in our job descriptions has custody of the PTO funds, not the Prez.They are the only one who have authorization to disperse any money for PTO. So, in essence, the Treasurer bears the largest responsibility for misuse of PTO funds.

So, my advice is to bring this up to your President and Principal and let them make the determination on how to proceed in recovering the additional embezzled monies. Don't go in with your guns blazing and wind up in a awkward position that might be hard to get out of, just inform and move forward. The past is of no benefit for the future, it just impedes it.

Last year there was only the president and treasurer, few people attended meetings, not much interest in involvement by parents or teachers. This year we have a full board. At the first board meeting we were told that the treasurer last year stole quite a bit of money by simply making cash withdrawls (we have since made this impossible). This info was not to be shared with anyone but the board per the principal and prez. The district is handling the matter, worked out a payment plan with the woman, and reimbursed us. Ok, we are moving along.

Recently I was able to view all of the bank statements from last year and I can totally see it happening: cash withdrawls of several hundred dollars were made every month--and total far more than the board was told was the amount of the embezzlement. Now I don't know what to do with this information and I need advice from those of you who have far more experience than I.

First I never liked the secrecy about the whole thing, but that was not my decision. The reason they wanted to keep it a secret was so as not to embarrass the woman who did it, which I did not think should even be a consideration. Also, I felt that if the prez had been on top of the situation with financial safeguards in place, this would never have happened, so she shares some responsibility in this. And now I question what all of the cash withdrawls were about last year, because like I said if they were all by the treas, she took a lot more than we were led to believe. But I was also not very involved last year, so I wasn't there to ask questions and perhaps bear some responsibility as well. Another board member brought up in a private conversation with me the idea that we bring all of this to light, ask questions, and ask the prez to step down due to financial irresponsibility. I'm not sure that is necessary, we have plenty of new financial safeguards in place--and as VP I am not ready to step up as the prez yet!--but on the other hand, should the prez be "punished" for the embezzlement? Or do we just let it all go and move on?

I'd love to hear your opinions on this before we decide how to handle this, especially from those of you who have been through this.