Answer to your question:

When I brought up that example I was refering to a School Committee request for something that would be covered by the town, not the PTO. The School Board has to "approve" the things that we provide to the school, such as the Online Accelerated Reading Program, but that is different than a Principal asking for something that would be paid for by the town school budget.

Actually, the one way a Principal has to "work around" the system is the PTO. As a non-profit organization we can do whatever we want, with permission. If we personally want to provide our children's school with Smart Boards for every classroom, we would first get buy-in from the Principal and the PTO Committee, then either fundraise or allocate the funds, then I would write a letter to the School Committee explaining our intentions. Of course the School Board is never going to deny a PTO from gifting something like a playground, smart boards, computers, etc. And they would never expect all PTOs in the town to have to provide the same as what we do.

IMO, any PTO can raise funds if they want to. There are so many ways to do so now-a-days. If you don't feel you will raise a lot of funds with a school based fundraiser, such as a magazine or candle sale, then try BoxTop$ or a Golf Tournament or a poker tournament, etc. In fact, when I hold the poker tournament fundraisers I actually do not promote them through the school and the 100 or so players are just regular town players. The point is that there are ways for a group to raise funds, no matter what the financial situation of the families.

I guess I like the fact that my group goes so far above and beyond the other groups in the town. We raise more than twice what the other four elementaries each do, but we hold more than 3 times the events. We've made the papers so often because of these things that I heard that our PTO has been mentioned in other school PTO meetings. This brings me pride in how amazing our PTO is. And a lot of that is due to the extra, major fundraisers that we run (golf tournament, poker tournaments, etc.). These bring in over $10,000 each year and if we had to give 80% of that to the other schools to be "fair" then we probably wouldn't be putting in the many, many hours it takes to pull these off.

PresidentJim

Yes, President Jim, it is entirely possible that all of the funds raised by a school in our district through our major district-wide fundraisers will not go back to that school. We find that acceptable because, in the past, we have had "rich" schools and "poor" schools, because some parts of town are more affluent than others.

When the district had to close some elementaries a few years ago and formed "focus schools" -- two K-1, two 2-3, and two 4-5 schools, one of the things parents liked about this arrangement is that kids from all socioecomonic backgrounds were put together. Under the old structure, some of these building PTOs previously didn't have enough money to fund assemblies or even field trips. When parents from the district met to discuss the future of our PTO, we all agreed that we liked having a PTO that could fund similar things in all buildings, so we wouldn't have a school where the kids never went on field trips because their PTO couldn't raise enough money.

However, individual buildings may conduct other (smaller) fundraisers by themselves, with that money staying with that building, for special projects, events, etc. Schools also have some latitude within their budgets to "do their own thing," so each building is not doing exactly the same things.


A question for Jim -- if a request for smart boards is approved, how does a PTO pay for it if they don't have as much money as the others?

KATreas,

I'm trying to understand something. It sounds as though in your town all funds raised by all PTOs are pooled together and then divied out to the various PTOs?

If that is the case then it is quite possible that your PTO is raising more than their fair share and not receiving those funds back. This does not seem like a good option to me, if I am reading things correct.

In my town I know that there is a rule that any funds approved for one school for standard items (such as normal budgetary items), but not something like a new roof, has to be offered to all of the schools. If, for example, the Principal at my children's school requested new smart boards for all of the classrooms and this was approved, then all of the schools in the town would have to be offered the same. This, IMO, keeps things fair.

Now, again IMO, any funds that my non-profit, 501(C)3 brings in is for us to use and no one else. The idea of my group's fundraising efforts being pooled with the other schools in the town, and then "evenly" distributed between all of the PTOs would be against the purpose of our group. We work hard. Arguably harder than all of the other schools in the town. But this hard work shows because of all of the amazing things that we do. Since I have taken on the role of President I have added poker tournaments and a Golf Tournament to our fundraisers for the year, which has increased our overall funds by $14,000 annually. But these extra funds has enabled us to hold numerous new family events and affect the school in so many positive ways. Under the town pooling PTO funds plan why would any group hold extra fundraisers since those funds would be divied up with the other schools. Wow, that just doesn't make sense to me and in many ways, IMO, would undermine what we are trying to do.

As far as town wide PTOs, I think they are fine as long as they are used for information sharing and each individual PTO maintains their own functionality, including maintaining and controlling their own funds.

Regards,
PresidentJim

Hi Mikki-

A week or two ago, I outlined the structure of our city-wide PTO in the "Merging PTOs" post in this section.

Basically, our Executive Board (which is made up of all the heads of the individual school PTOs plus other officers) sets the budget for the year and the district-wide fundraising activities. As long as an individual school stays within their overall budget, the exec board does not approve expenditures. We're in our second year and are still working out all of the "bugs" but it is working well for us.

The individual PTOs operate quite independently, but we do value the sharing of ideas that would probably not happen if we were all separate PTOs. Another advantage for us is that the budgets of each building are very comparable, so we no longer have "rich" and "poor" schools as far as PTO funding. The fundraising money is put into one "pot" which is budgeted as equally as possible among the schools.

Hope this helps!

We do not have a town wide PTO, though the newish Superintendant of Schools has hinted to me of forming something along these lines.

However, our School Committee does have to approve any "major" things that we are doing, if it is tangeable and will become the property of the school. So if we wanted to bring in Historical Perspectives to have an actor portray Abraham Lincoln, then no problems, but when we wanted to purchase an online Accelerated Reading program for the school we had to get approval and provide the funds to the city so that they could make the direct purchase.

Regards,
PresidentJim

our PTO is part of a larger town wide PTO- we currently have 6 schools in our district and the presidents as well as the excutive bd of the town wide meet once a month. Any expenses over $1000 must be approved by the town wide bd (and it has happened where they have vetoed the expense even though the local school needed it) and as well, they have the ability to set rules that we, the local schools, must abide by (whether we agree with them or not) My question to you all is- how many of you have town wide PTOs (you may call them something different) and what is their role within your system.

thank you