Reply to S/O Why do parents at high SES schools choose a PTO instead of PTA?

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Reply to "S/O Why do parents at high SES schools choose a PTO instead of PTA?"

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[quote=Anonymous]A PTA specifically prohibits you from raising money for X/earmark funds. You can raise $50K in one year, but it must serve multiple purposes and go into many different buckets. In the same way, a PTA is not specifically supposed to sponsor one single student or single out a cause (you can have a Carnival or annual event, but it should benefit the entire year's budget/multiple line items, not a specific thing). Scholarships and benefits for all is more the thinking there.

A PTO allows you to do that and keep all funds at your school. For example, you want a new playground and it is going to cost $150K. You can hold $50K from a previous year and apply that to the project, raise $50 this year specifically for the playground and then keep raising for it until you reach your goal. In a PTA situation, it's $0 in, $0 out year over year. So if you happened to raise $150K that year OVER the budgeted amount, you can fund it. But that's a big lift for one year. You also lose the support of National PTA and basically have to invent your own structure/bylaws/rules, and some are not willing to do that.

I have also heard of schools establishing funds/endowments that you can pay into. Pre-covid, I knew of a school that needed laptops the school wouldn't fund for around $150K. Parents had been paying in for years, and they finally reached that goal, and the money had also been invested so had grown modestly. Now, how you agree on the risk and who's managing that, I'm not sure.

So while you may see it as hoarding money, I think it is useful for longer-term goals and aspirations that require a lot of fund raising and gives you more freedom for bigger school support.

In any event (PTA or PTA), budget reports should be transparent and available to any member, and usually at every meeting.

- Former PTA treasurer whose Executive Board once contemplated going PTO[/quote]

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