With the economy pinching both schools and parents, the Board of Education’s PTO Committee wants to draw up a new set of guidelines for class fees and fundraisers. Some parents and faculty feel the fees–sometimes amounting to over $100 per child–are too high and represent a “double tax” on parents. Others assert that some school programs are too dependent on outside fundraising, and should be funded by the county.

Board of Education member from District 1, Vanessa Silkwood, chairs the committee.

   “There are really no guidelines; there’s really nothing hard to guide principals, PTOs, and other fundraising organizations as to what should or shouldn’t be funded,” claims Silkwood.

    Reading from state codes, Silkwood emphasized that “student activity funds should be used to supplement and not replace funds necessary to fulfill the local board’s obligation to provide an instructional program, property, equipment, and salaries.”

    With a chuckle, she asked, “How often does that actually happen?”

Silkwood wants eventually to change this with a set of clear guidelines on what PTOs and principals should expect fundraisers to fund.

Some of the committee members raised concerns about tying the hands of PTOs and schools.

    “My concern is that this is going to take discretion away from the principals and the PTO. It’s great assuming that the schools are actually funding all these necessary things, but since that’s not happening, it would concern me to take all that discretion away,” said one.

Silkwood pointed out that these plans were long-term, and she understood times are fiscally difficult.   

   “We need to work on a policy to bring before the board, but I don’t feel that the time is right to actually implement it,” she said. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I just wanted to plant the seed.”

Slated for the PTO Committee’s next meeting is development of a five-year plan to reduce the role of fees and fundraisers in providing services that many feel should be paid for by the county.  

A huge part of that plan will be to cut costs and waste by examining everything from budgets to bus routes.

“I’m all for finding our own money rather than going to the County Commission with our hand extended,” said Silkwood.

She pointed to two recent moves by the board as examples.

The first one is the board’s motion to have an architect standard’s manual made for the system. It is a book of standardized specifications for every single component that goes into schools, from hinges to heating coils. Despite its hefty $35,000 price-tag, it should save the system millions in embarrassing construction and repair mistakes.

The second is the pending review of school copier usage by the firm Expense Reduction Analysts. Right now, schools operate under a patchwork of machines, policies, and suppliers, with no centralized oversight. This company will collect and analyze all the data about copier usage and create a centralized, simplified plan that will cut enormous waste. It will only be paid a sum equivalent to half the money it saves the county for two years.

The topic of copier usage is especially important for Silkwood’s long-term plans.

Her survey of principals asking which fundraiser-supported programs should be the county’s responsibility showed a large number of them felt paying for copier usage was the county’s responsibility, not the PTO’s.

Copier usage and some technology programs are often paid by class fees and fundraisers. Silkwood would like to change this, but she knows it will be a long road.

“It’s something I think the culture in Sumner County has come to expect. It’s just kind of gone unsaid that those kind of things are paid for by fundraiser. ... There are going to be a lot of tiny little steps to take before we reach our goal.”