<p>I am the treasurer of my son’s HS PTA. This is a very small specialty HS within the public school system. The students have to be accepted to the school, and are generally very bright, motivated kids. Last night was our monthly meeting, the first meeting after our big annual fundraiser, which was a big success. Our PTA funds student events, buys caps and gowns for the graduates, and provides grants for faculty and students, among other things. Every year we come up with a budget, but occasionally we have requests for funds for special situations. </p>
<p>So, last night a student group came to the meeting and requested funding because 10 students won a competition and were eligible to go to finals in another state. The school district will pay a portion, and the rest has to be made up with fundraising and the parent’s money. A group of parents of these 10 came to the meeting, and after some discussion, a motion was proposed and seconded, a vote was taken, and the students got full funding. After the vote, the parents(who have never bothered to come to a meeting before) left the meeting.All they were interested in was getting their money. </p>
<p>Almost all the Board members were very upset about this development. It is true that we have a large bank balance at the moment, because we have just had our big fundraiser. But we feel that we were just bullied into paying a large sum to benefit only 10 students. We know that we handled this poorly, and we’re concerned about the future, as other student groups will come to view us as the first stop in funding their projects/trips rather than a last resort. And our bylaws state that we are supposed use funds to benefit the greatest number of students, so this is not a good precedent</p>
<p>I’m pretty new at this, so I was wondering if any of you with PTA experience could share your procedures/experiences with me so that we don’t have this happen in the future.</p>
<p>Why should the PTA be “the last resort”? Isn’t the purpose of the PTA to provide support to the students and staff? </p>
<p>That said, maybe going forward you could require the groups requesting funding to match the funds you contribute. That way some of the responsibility falls on the students/families, and not just on the PTA. (Which, btw, IS funded by the families…correct?)</p>
<p>I get the idea that fully funding an activity for a small number of students is probably NOT the best idea. But, if this group attends this activity and does well…it adds to the reputation of your school. A good thing, when attracting students to your school, and adding to the respectability quotient in the eyes of college admissions counselors…</p>
<p>I don’t think what you did was so terrible, but I do think you need a plan to carry forward. One thing you might do is set up a fund that’s available for this sort of thing and limit it to x amount per group, and only for certain sorts of travel expenses. Being able to go to finals is a big thing for these kids and so important for college admissions. It can be a huge expense for the kids of modest means. I believe that when my sons made to the state finals for Science Olympiad, some of the costs were covered by the school district, some by their own fundraising, some by the parents, and I believe some from a fund for Educational Excellence that operates outside the PTA and gives money to whatever they feel like, which helps keep the politics out of the PTA. But part of that is because the high school PTA unlike middle school and elementary school didn’t have any fundraisers at all so their ability to do anything was pretty limited.</p>
<p>Life isn’t entirely fair. In middle school I was in charge of a committee that gave out grants for teacher projects. Not every teacher applied for the funds, and we didn’t give the money to every teacher who applied. A lot of students benefited from the money, but not all of them.</p>
<p>Yes, you need a plan to carry forward, as mathmom mentioned. Otherwise, parents can pack meetings to get their kids’ activities funded if a simple vote after a motion is all that is needed. </p>
<p>This is one of the NYC speciality schools?</p>
<p>
And if they don’t match the funds, do you pull back all the money? Sounds like that could be messy.</p>
<p>I was the president of a Parents Booster Group for two years, its like a PTA. We never fund a special interest group’s activity, they have to raise fund themselves and if there are special needs of individuals, an application and essay are needed to determind the merit. Board Members then vote on whether to accept or reject.</p>
<p>I also have been an officer for a parent group that, on purpose, wasn’t a PTA so as to avoid all those rules. I get where you are coming from. We also don’t fund EC groups. Each is responsible for its own fund-raising. For some reason, admin agrees to fund a hugs trip for SciO nationals, which bugs me. I’ve never understood why that group gets funding but no one else does.</p>
<p>If this is something the Board doesn’t want to do, you need to put it in your bylaws.</p>
<p>shellz, we all agreed that we wanted to give them some money, and were prepared to give them half, leaving the door open for more if their fundraising efforts came up short. We’ve done that in the past. We’re really proud of all the kids. Maybe “last resort” is a poor choice of words, but I meant we have always in the past expected clubs to take some responsibility for fundraising, and for parents to contribute. There’s no way we could function very long if every club was fully funded by us. And when you say the PTA is funded by the families, I would have to say that the PTA is funded by SOME families. It’s voluntary to join the PTA, and not everyone does. And even fewer participate fully in our fundraisers. I’m guessing that’s the situation with most schools.</p>
<p>I guess it troubles us that we work so hard to make this an organization that benefits the school as a whole. This grant took away more than 1/3 of our fundraiser’s profits. Most of the ACTIVE PTA members would have preferred to take some time to decide how to responsibly spend this money that has been entrusted to us. We were discussing some great ideas before this meeting that might have to be tabled.</p>
<p>What I’m looking for is some kind of procedure that prevents us from being rushed into a vote. The attendance at our monthly meetings always swells when there’s money to be given out, and as soon as they get it, the parents leave. We’d also like to see more accountability when a group is requesting a large sum. This was the most we’ve given to any group ever, and we’re suffering from sticker shock.</p>
<p>I was very involved with the parent organizations at my Ds’ schools for many, many years. I don’t recall ever being presented in this way with a funding request, but, had it happened, we had a process whereby the requesting party had to present, in detail, what the the funds would be used for, and how, and by whom. Full funding for a very small group of students would not have happened. Ever. The requesting group would present their request to the PTA/school council/etc. and then a decision as to the amount of funding, if any, would be communicated within 14 days. I think it was a big mistake for the chair of your PTA to have allowed this to all happen in one meeting. I’m assuming that you knew nothing of the coming request prior to the meeting? Or were they on the agenda for that night? </p>
<p>We did always have what we called an Angel Fund where things could be funded for students whose families were unable to afford to participate, e.g., field trips, etc. This, obviously, would be different than fully funding ten students on an out of state trip. I think you’ve set an unfortunate precedent here, and if I were the Chair, I’d be meeting with the rest of the exec. and the school principal today to possibly amend last night’s decision.</p>
<p>What we did is form a special committee that rules on how to spend the money. It’s not a vote of the entire membership. This avoids the mtg equivalent of “stuffing the ballot box.”</p>
<p>HotCanary, you used the word “bullied” earlier. Was that really the demeanor? If so, that is pretty awful and I think that should be addressed in some fashion, too.</p>
<p>alwaysamom, I agree with you. It is a bad precedent, and it’s going to cause hard feelings, because we have provided only a
percentage to help students go on a similar trip earlier in the year. I like the idea of an Angel Fund, because many of our students come from affluent backgrounds. I have modest means, yet I could have afforded to kick in for this trip. As I have in the past at my daughter’s HS, for music department trips. I don’t know if we can reverse this.</p>
<p>zoosermom, maybe not “bullied” but certainly “steamrollered”. One woman proposed an much more moderate approach (give them half, which remained in our budget for student grants and see how they did with fundraising before giving more) but the other faction pushed their vote through. It wasn’t outright ugly, but it wasn’t nice. The club was on the agenda, but none of us expected such a large request.</p>
<p>I have been involved in a lot of parent groups, EC groups,etc. And am often the Treasurer. Are all these parents who voted actually members of the PTA? If not, they cannot vote on how to spend PTA funds…somehow this frequently gets overlooked at these meetings. Call a second meeting and re-vote (there are PTA rules on membership/voting, you don’t want to violate them).</p>
<p>I would propose a bylaws change. There are several options: funding requests must be presented at one meeting, voted on at a second meeting (hard to do with some timelines), funding of travel limited to matching the groups fundraising efforts (you pass the funding request as matching funds not to exceed $XXX. That amount is one half of the actual travel costs. You can limit travel costs to transportation, hotel, and partial meals, perhaps include entry fees if you like). I generally prefer this approach. You can use Angel Funds for those truly in need. But everyone has some skin in the game.</p>
<p>I would certainly have those parents on the top of the list for next volunteer effort.</p>
That’s excellent advice. You need to go back to the rules and make sure they were followed. If not, the whole thing will have to be walked back and there’s no real choice on that.</p>
<p>I’ve been in the position where I’ve requested funds for something that is probably similar to this request.</p>
<p>It was funded by the school board, the parent association, by fund raising and anything left was by the parents of the kids attending. In every situation, the parent association (they had two for some reason) had an executive committee and they voted on the request. It’s been a while but I think the request to fund the trip was voted on by people present at the meeting but the actual amount given was set by the executive committee. We never asked for the entire amount and also we did not vote at the meeting. We gave our presentation and then left. It wasn’t our money to give even though we were active members of the organization.</p>
<p>Agree with zoozermom and mom2m. I was once a PTA president, and have been on other boards as well, and the best thing I learned was “do what your documents say”. PTA has a lot of rules, and having budget is one of them. Spending outside the budget should be thoughtful, and not quick. It is okay for the president to table the discussion for further review etc.</p>
<p>I also wonder, were all those who were voting PTA members? You might want to check that out…you should know who is and is not a member (and by the way you have to be a member at that school…not just a member at another child’s school etc.) since their votes did not count if they are not.</p>
<p>But read your by laws, there may be a way to back track from this vote. </p>
<p>Also, the PTA is really an advocacy group for children, not a fundraising organization. Our fairly large school district established an Education Foundation. The individual schools operate under it’s umbrella, and have much more flexibility in spending and fundraising. </p>
<p>We had an instance once where the PTA approved a $50,000 expenditure based on future funds raised. Let’s just say when I arrived at the school, we spent the first year scrambling to pay off the debt! Not good.</p>
<p>Yes, we have the same rule that only PTA members can vote. We had a sign-in sheet at the beginning of the meeting, and our membership committee is checking the list. I don’t know how things got so out of hand last night. I had just come from work after 7 straight days of doing income taxes, so I didn’t bring my “A” game. But there are 5 other board members. We do have one board member who always wants to give money away, and can be very pushy about it, more or less accusing us of being cheapskates. Some of your comments are right on point about it not being our money to spend. I’m going to share them with the board, and yes, we do need to go to and possibly change our bylaws. All of us are fairly new members. The former president was president for 8 years, because she had 3 children go through the school. I haven’t written a check, so there may be hope yet. Again, we are proud of these students. They are great kids. But this not the right way to handle things.</p>
<p>So, basically, a large group could join your PTA, show up en masse, propose some project that would wipe out your funds, and if they were a large enough group, could all vote on their project and it would pass? Not good. So not good.</p>
<p>This is a case where you realize you don’t have all the necessary info to decide on a matter so motion to table. This gives you time to regroup which you the use to pore thru the bylaws for a spending limit.</p>