- Are you the PTO President, or is your involvement in regards to obtaining the Lowe's Grant?
The reason I ask is that it seems crucial that your PTO President get involved. He/she, you, and any other PTA members involved need to sit down and fix this before it becomes worse.
- Does the campus Beautification Committee realize that the Lowe's people are looking for specific things, such as pictures, local papers being invited to write about the project, etc.? I don't know this for sure, but I would imagine that if this is not done then any chance of obtaining a future grant would be dimished.
I would love to hear your Principal's opinion on this subject. If he/she can't get it then you may need to take the difficult stance and just say no. I would hope it wouldn't get to that point, but at the same time I would hope that it wouldn't have gotten to the point it is now. You, your President and your team must make them understand that they have one of two choices. One, keep you guys out of the loop and not be funded, or work as a team for the betterment of the school and the children!
Good luck and let us know what happenes,
PresidentJim
Your note is a little confusing: Is the "committee" representatives of the school itself or PTO members? Was the grant obtained via the application by the PTO or was it submitted by the school or school board?
Any large project such as this should have a project plan with the list of the proposed steps that will be taken, the costs for each and a timeline. I would keep your project on target and under budget. Only expenses listed in the plan that was discussed at your PTO meeting and agreed to (between PTO & school authority) would be expensed and funded by the grant.
We have a huge playground expansion plan that we broke into 3 phases. Each phase was clearly drawn up with the equipment costs, installation costs, participants needed & for what. We provided updates to the school via our newsletter and this month we'll be finishing the project. It has not only kept us on budget, but since it a plan was clearly drawn up and discussed at our meetings, there is no arguments.
It's not too late to regroup, discuss and create a plan before any further work is done. Get your PTO and school reps on the same page and determine "who's project is it!". Good Luck
Making a positive difference one project at a time <img src=images/smilies/smile.gif>
We were fortunate enough to receive $3500 from the Lowe's Toolbox for Education for a campus beautification and reading garden project, but now that we have the money, the school is completely cutting PTA out of the planning and the work. It's like they just want us to turn the money over to the Campus Beautification Committee, which as far as I can see, is only 1 person. Cleanup and preparation work was completed already and we had no idea that any of that had been scheduled because we had parents who signed up to work on those things and they were out of the loop also. I refused a week ago to sign off on a $500 request without documentation of what the money was needed for and now the school is mad at me because I'm standing in the way of "their" project. Without PTA, there would be no project! The "committee" is not speaking to me so I still don't have the information I need to make me comfortable with the request for the money. PTA has offered to on multiple occasions to sit down with the committee and iron out a schedule for the beautification project to no avail. I don't want to have the project stopped in its tracks, but we are not an extra bank account for the school either. Any suggestions?
