We've been a PTA for 8 years now and have things pretty well in hand. The one issue that keeps coming up is the budget. We set our budget up over the summer and vote on it. Once accepted, anything over budget must get voted on and approved.

Our issue is with PARP. Each year we're asked to hire the preformer to kick off PARP. It started out $450 and each year it's gone up. This year we budgeted $700 which was $50 more than last year. The teacher who chaired PARP came back and asked for $750 as that was the cost this year. Her comment was "Things go up."

In my opinion they're not finding an entertainer to fit their budget, they're finding an entertainer they want and then strong arming us into paying for it.

Another bone of contention is that PARP is advertised as sponsered by the teacher's union. The union gives them a little money, (much less than we give!) to buy the bookmarks and pencils and junk they give out each week if the child turns in his PARP form all filled out.

We did address this and did get equal billing on the "sponsored by" when the notice went out this year.

We specifically said we were going to publish our budget to the principals this year and make sure they understood they couldn't go over. Yet the president when confronted by her favorite teacher with the increase just approved it without even a vote.

We have a lot of other things coming up that we pay for that often go over budget. My suggestion is that we write an individual letter to the principal addressing each event, outlining the budget and making it clear that if they go over, it'll be up to her to make up the short-fall out of her budget.

Does this seem reasonable?

By the way, I was treasurer for the past two years and this year I'm not an officer, but instead chairing membership, family fun, school store, and co-chair on the budget, fundraising and nomination commitees, as well as serving on the principal's leadership committee at one building and the technology committee at another. We do include chairs on our board.