No, we're a public school in a large school district in California. The California part explains why we have to pay for so many things that a normal school district would pay for. Our state is broke!
We have over 900 kids and 40 teachers at our school. It used to be that the school district paid for all of this stuff, but with strict budget cuts if we don't pay for it the school doesn't have it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of schools in our district that don't have active PTOs and don't get the things we have in our school.
Our large budget pays for all assemblies, an art program run by volunteers (only art instruction the kids get), a before-school PE program, safety patrol, periodicals for each classroom, a counseling program for at-risk kids, $150 per teacher for supplies, $500 grant to each grade level for assemblies or field trips, computers and software (our district provides NO technology equipment). We pay for the librarian, the health aide (we only have a nurse two days a week), the copier, part of the custodian's salary, and supplies for the nurse.
It's not going to get any better here and we expect the Principal to come to us to pay for even more. I envy all of you that live in districts where they actually provide something besides the basics to your kids!
- We have a Staff App budget of $800, which on a total budget of $21,145, is only about 4%. But..we also allocate over $4,000 for our teachers to claim up to $90 each in reimbursement for classroom expenses (is that considered Staff App??).
- We don't explicitly have a marketing/communications budget but we do pay the school $400 per year for the privilege of using the school copier.
- Our Bylaws require that we carryover at least $2,000 each year. In practice, we usually carry over $4-6k because of budgets that arent' spent by year's end (even though we try!).
We don't currently have a long range project that would need us to allocate money over several years. In the absence of a specific plan, I don't think our PTO should save money "just in case". Real Rainy Days are rare for our PTO - most of what we do, though extremely beneficial, is non-essential if you strip education to the bare bones. If our fundraising flopped one year, we would be very sad, but the kids would still learn.
- We budget every penny (less the required $2k carryover) but some of our 26 expense categories are a little broad to allow some flexibility (ex: "Educational Materials"). We tend to budget our fundraising income conservatively so for the last several years we've had an unplanned income surplus. This surplus could be considered our contingency, though it's not something we specifically count on.
We just approved our budget for next year - it is over $100,000. We are allocating $500 for teacher appreciation. Last year we did over $1000, but with the school district budget cuts that we have to come up with funds to cover, we decided the teachers need to share in the pain. We pay the school for the use of their copy machine and this year we have to take on the entire lease (due to budget cuts) so it will cost us over $10,000. In a normal year it takes two reams of paper plus the copying costs for every flyer (including our monthly newsletter) we send out. We spend over $500 per year just on paper.
As for reserve money, we will try and carry over $30,000 next year. If the funds that we raise just went for "things" for the school our reserve wouldn't have to be so big, but we pay salaries for janitors, health aides, library aides, and counseling aides and need to be able to pay that even if our fundraising is a bust next year.
We allocate $1500 out of about $35-40K budget for staff appreciation and hospitality. Volunteer appreciation is handled by the school.
We spend about $2000 on copying, etc., for newsletters, flyers, etc., to get information out to the school. (We publish a monthly newsletter).
We do not hold money in the bank, nor do we have any "just in case". Everything is budgeted for at the beginning of the year. As the year progresses, we may get different requests, and so at the end of the year, if there is "extra" money, we vote on reallocating that money to accomodate the end of year requests.
I am working on next years budget and wanted to see what others are doing for appreciation, communication budgets, savings and rainy day funds.
- What percentages of your total budget do you allocate to staff/volunteer appreciation?
- Do you put funds away for communicating/marketing to your staff, parents and community? If so, what percentage?
- Do you put any away in the bank for future years or big ticket items that may come up?
- Do you have a part of the budget that is just there in case you need it for something or do you allocate everything at the beginning of the year?
