This entire website is a work in progress, so we invite your comments. This page is especially so. Is there something your PTA has learned that others could benefit from? Is there a mistake you have made you want to help others avoid?

Do you have a link to share? Does your school have a new PTA website? Is there an event that should be added to our calendar?

Signing Contracts

Did you know that only your PTA President can sign contracts for your PTA? However, this authority does NOT authorize the President to enter into agreements without the knowledge and consent of the Executive Board. To avoid legal trouble, misunderstandings, misappropriated funds, and confusion, make sure each committee chair's "plan of work" is officially voted on and approved early in the year. Also, make sure your President dates any contract he or she signs.

Serving Food at PTA Events

Health permits are NEEDED for ANY event where you are serving food, whether you're selling it or not. You ARE required to have a permit if you are serving families at carnivals or other events where anyone can attend. If you are in violation of a permit, the health department will shut you down and will not allow you to have an event requiring a permit in the future. There are 2 exceptions: (1) if it is for grocery store items that are still sealed & packaged such as soda cans or snack cakes or (2) if it is an event in which only a finite number will attend such as a teacher luncheon, in-school student celebration or PTA member-only event. However, the Health Dept recommends that you get a permit regardless as a precautionary measure. The application is free for school organizations and is easy to fill out. You can simply fax it over, but make sure you do it at least a week in advance of your event. They also have guidelines for types of foods that are allowed and how they need to be served. See web-site for more details on guidelines and the application for a health permit.

Catalog Fundraisers

Make sure all checks clear at the bank before fundraiser orders are distributed. Also, make sure your fundraiser allows return of products with no questions asked. We had a problem during our fall fundraiser one year. For the fundraiser, each child was given a catalog to get orders, collect money & submit that order form along with the money back to the PTA. This one parent collected cash from all the people ordering items from her and then wrote one check to the PTA for all items on that order form. Well, the check bounced! So, the orders came in, but thankfully we realized the check bounced before we fulfilled the order. We held the order and contact the parent. Without going into detail on all the calls we made, we determined that thisw as a planned scheme and our fundraiser had become a personal fundraiser for this person. The company would not take back the products, so the PTA had to try to sell them & ended up selling a lot at about half price to try to at least cover what we owed the company. We never used that company again and found one that takes back products with no questions asked. We also notified the school administration about the bad check so that they knew not to accept checks from this individual. We then contacted all the people on the order form to tell them the situation. All of those individuals said they would contact the person that took the orders to get their money back and didn't blame the school. However, we were concerned that our PTA would look bad to these other people that were expecting orders and did pay, so we were prepared to give them their order to protect the reputation of our PTA. We never expected something like this to happen at our school, but it does so safeguard against this.

Send us a note so we can add the information to the site.

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