Will they ever get rid of the principal at Ritchie Park

[Anonymous]

In neither of the links posted by 20:48 do the contracts say that boosterthon takes 70%. The highest amount is 50%. If someone is going to email parents or start a petition, they better have all their facts straight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:oh get off your high horse, 14:35.

Why do you have to say something nasty to everyone who disagrees?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:19:18, I want to punch you in your stupid face, hard. You are despicable. How do you sleep at night being such an awful person.

Are you serious?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In neither of the links posted by 20:48 do the contracts say that boosterthon takes 70%. The highest amount is 50%. If someone is going to email parents or start a petition, they better have all their facts straight.

Contract is from Fairfax county. Boosterthon sets up different contracts per state, per county, per school depending on how much they think they could get. Just another part of the scam. They do the same amount of work at different schools for different percentages and different money.

But at least they haven't gone out of business yet and taken a school or school's fundraising with them. I feel bad for the schools in Georgia that lost 100% of their donations as the company went bankrupt before reimbursing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a huge problem with Booster-thon keeping 50% of my donation, but I have an ever larger problem with the other 50% going to the RPES PTA. The treasurer is completely incompetent. When he was caught not having reconciled the books for months (and not even understanding a basic cash flow!), nothing was done except to collect cash in buckets (literally!) at the school talent show to make up for the deficit he had caused. He has not been replaced. He should have been removed immediately. PTA members have no information or anyway to weigh in on decisions unless they are on the board. The PTA meetings that are open/announced are just guest speakers. It is a joke.

Unless he took money, he did not cause the deficit. Don't you have monthly meetings with the budget presented in paper format to all members, looked over and approved? Just look back at the meeting minutes to see what was mentioned during the financial part of the meeting. Then who motioned the monthly and current budget/balance, who approved and who second the approval. Ask all of them why there is a deficit? It doesn't all fall on one volunteer. This is something the entire board and entire PTA membership (or at least the ones that go to the meeting) are made aware of monthly. How can you go into a deficit and not know the prior month or two months at the meetings if everyone is looking over the budget together. Something is not right.

[Anonymous]

Unless he took money, he did not cause the deficit. Don't you have monthly meetings with the budget presented in paper format to all members, looked over and approved? Just look back at the meeting minutes to see what was mentioned during the financial part of the meeting. Then who motioned the monthly and current budget/balance, who approved and who second the approval. Ask all of them why there is a deficit? It doesn't all fall on one volunteer. This is something the entire board and entire PTA membership (or at least the ones that go to the meeting) are made aware of monthly. How can you go into a deficit and not know the prior month or two months at the meetings if everyone is looking over the budget together. Something is not right.

I completely agree that something is not right.

We don't have monthly meetings for the general membership. Meetings are every other month, and 90% of the time is spent with a guest speaker talking. The discussion of the budget/finances in the 2 public meetings before the deficit was discovered went like this:

President: "Treasurer, do you have an update?"
Treasurer: "Sure, the budget is looking good."
Member: "Can you be any more specific?"
Treasurer: Slightly annoyed. "Everything is in good shape. We paid for [classroom supplies, teacher appreciation breakfast]."

End of budget discussion. PTA members are given no information about finances -- that is privileged information that is made available only to people who serve on the board. And in this case, I'm not sure that the Treasurer was actually providing monthly reports to the board. If he was, either none of them were paying attention, or none of them understand basics of accounting.

When they came clean (ish) about this mess -- and they only did that because their solution to fix the deficit was to turn the talent show from a free event to a paid event with only a few days notice, and there was a huge outcry -- they said the Treasurer did not understand their budgeting/accounting software. Which again, doesn't make sense, because if he didn't understand it, then wouldn't he have said "Hey, I don't get this" before months and months went by and the deficit was incurred?

I think the Board is either blindly ignorant of their responsibility, or hiding an even worse problem. So yeah, I'm not supporting BoosterThon because neither BoosterThon nor Ritchie Park PTA can be trusted.

[Anonymous]

7:10, you are a liar or just a moron. Or both. You truly have no idea what you are talking about, and you are on a board vilifying people that are working hard to help your kids at a school. I look forward to the day you actually volunteer to do one thing at the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Unless he took money, he did not cause the deficit. Don't you have monthly meetings with the budget presented in paper format to all members, looked over and approved? Just look back at the meeting minutes to see what was mentioned during the financial part of the meeting. Then who motioned the monthly and current budget/balance, who approved and who second the approval. Ask all of them why there is a deficit? It doesn't all fall on one volunteer. This is something the entire board and entire PTA membership (or at least the ones that go to the meeting) are made aware of monthly. How can you go into a deficit and not know the prior month or two months at the meetings if everyone is looking over the budget together. Something is not right.

I completely agree that something is not right.

We don't have monthly meetings for the general membership. Meetings are every other month, and 90% of the time is spent with a guest speaker talking. The discussion of the budget/finances in the 2 public meetings before the deficit was discovered went like this:

President: "Treasurer, do you have an update?"
Treasurer: "Sure, the budget is looking good."
Member: "Can you be any more specific?"
Treasurer: Slightly annoyed. "Everything is in good shape. We paid for [classroom supplies, teacher appreciation breakfast]."

End of budget discussion. PTA members are given no information about finances -- that is privileged information that is made available only to people who serve on the board. And in this case, I'm not sure that the Treasurer was actually providing monthly reports to the board. If he was, either none of them were paying attention, or none of them understand basics of accounting.

When they came clean (ish) about this mess -- and they only did that because their solution to fix the deficit was to turn the talent show from a free event to a paid event with only a few days notice, and there was a huge outcry -- they said the Treasurer did not understand their budgeting/accounting software. Which again, doesn't make sense, because if he didn't understand it, then wouldn't he have said "Hey, I don't get this" before months and months went by and the deficit was incurred?

I think the Board is either blindly ignorant of their responsibility, or hiding an even worse problem. So yeah, I'm not supporting BoosterThon because neither BoosterThon nor Ritchie Park PTA can be trusted.

If this is true, then yes, the PTA is incompetent. I was wondering why they were asking for donations at the variety show. I'm a bit disgusted by all this. I normally am supportive of the PTA. I think they need to make their meetings more transparent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:7:10, you are a liar or just a moron. Or both. You truly have no idea what you are talking about, and you are on a board vilifying people that are working hard to help your kids at a school. I look forward to the day you actually volunteer to do one thing at the school.

Not that PP... but what about that post was a lie? Do you know how the budget got into the negatives, and how is it that the PTA didn't know, or didn't mention it in the previous meetings?

[Anonymous]

The PTA sounds like it has problems, but I don't understand how hat reflects on the principal. Tell the PTA to keep track of the Boxtops better and get on with it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:7:10, you are a liar or just a moron. Or both. You truly have no idea what you are talking about, and you are on a board vilifying people that are working hard to help your kids at a school. I look forward to the day you actually volunteer to do one thing at the school.

Not that PP... but what about that post was a lie? Do you know how the budget got into the negatives, and how is it that the PTA didn't know, or didn't mention it in the previous meetings?

Wasn't there a whole meeting about how it got into negatives and the answer was they made a mistake? Person who is so mean, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong I'm asking a question. I can't 100% remember but I though they said they made a mistake with budgeting. I can't remember if it was the budgeting software or budgeting in general. They did admit the should have done a fall fundraiser and didn't.

[Anonymous]

7:10, you are a liar or just a moron. Or both. You truly have no idea what you are talking about, and you are on a board vilifying people that are working hard to help your kids at a school. I look forward to the day you actually volunteer to do one thing at the school.

Please explain what actually happened if the previous account is untrue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:7:10, you are a liar or just a moron. Or both. You truly have no idea what you are talking about, and you are on a board vilifying people that are working hard to help your kids at a school. I look forward to the day you actually volunteer to do one thing at the school.

Not that PP... but what about that post was a lie? Do you know how the budget got into the negatives, and how is it that the PTA didn't know, or didn't mention it in the previous meetings?

Wasn't there a whole meeting about how it got into negatives and the answer was they made a mistake? Person who is so mean, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong I'm asking a question. I can't 100% remember but I though they said they made a mistake with budgeting. I can't remember if it was the budgeting software or budgeting in general. They did admit the should have done a fall fundraiser and didn't.

Yes. The board explained at their last meeting what happened. The treasurer said he did not understand exactly how much was in the account and that coupled with no fall fundraisers created the issue. He may have not understand the software too but I don't remember that.

[Anonymous]

The treasurer said he did not understand exactly how much was in the account

This person should no longer be the treasurer. And every meeting should have a printed copy of the GL handed out to every PTA member.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The treasurer said he did not understand exactly how much was in the account

This person should no longer be the treasurer. And every meeting should have a printed copy of the GL handed out to every PTA member.

I agree and why is your school only doing meetings every other month? That is like 4 maybe 5 meetings the entire year. So if your meetings average 1.5hrs (ours are usually 1-2hrs long, no guest speakers) how do you plan, budget, approve, and work for the entire school meeting in only 6 hours time? No wonder some members are feeling excluded. You don't meet enough or decide on things together.

And how can the treasurer say everything is fine? Do you not all get a printed copy and approve it like a PP said. You don't just say "sure, everything is good" and move on. Who approved the budget at each meeting prior to your deficit.