A conflict that originated on the Encinal School basketball court appears headed for a court of law after a father who was stripped of his volunteer coaching position filed a lawsuit against the school’s Parent Teacher Organization and three parents who volunteer as PTO officers.

Now, we’ll never know what really happened. It’s one person’s word against another. What we do know is that noone ever expects to be sued. Here’s your nugget from this story: get insurance for your parent group. We get asked all the time: do we really need insurance? The answer is always yes.  Chances of getting sued are slim but if you add up the chances of embezzlement and event issues and injuries — it’s just not wise to hedge your bets. After all, it’s our kids’ education we are talking about.

1. Make a rule that someone besides your treasurer receives and opens the bank statement each month. Temptation is much greater if a financially struggling treasurer knows she can write a check to cash and then just rip it up when it comes back from the bank.
2. Have an audit committee that will review the books at least once per year. (It can be all volunteers; doesn’t need to be accountants.)
3. Get bonding insurance. It’s cheap, it provides real protection, and it’s worth it.

Just this month, there has been another flurry of embezzlement stories from school parent groups. A PTA treasurer in California admitted she stole $35,000. And in Kentucky, a PTO president was charged with taking $10,000. We’ve seen dozens of these every year since PTO Today started in 1999.

The key to keeping your group out of these headlines is to make it much more likely that a misdeed will be noticed. The typical culprit in these crimes is a very normal volunteer, often in financial stress, who notices how easy it would be to “borrow” some funds for a while. I can’t recall a single embezzle case (or a big loss) in a group that followed the above steps.

Final plea: If you’re a treasurer, will you please make instituting these steps your job? Sometimes leaders worry they’ll be insulting their treasurer if they ask about these matters. You can solve that easily by taking on the task yourself. (And consider adding a few more easy-to-follow finance best practices while you’re at it.)

Has your group struggled with this issue? Or put some good controls in place? Would love it if you’d share your feedback and experience on our message boards.

My take on why these backpack express bans are nonsense was posted a few weeks back.

We do like the fact that this case was prosecuted and taken seriously. Too often, groups or schools try to sweep these cases under the rug or prosecutors downplay the damage.  Make no mistake — this is stealing from kids and violating a trust.  There’s also often even further damage to the support and involvement at a a particular school for years.

More than worth it to use smart, basic money hanbling procedures.  And to get insured.

In this case, the method was forging her co-signers signature on dozens of checks.  Our most basic of financial best practices – making sure that a non-signer opens the checking statement each month — would have likely prevented this one.  Also hope they’re insured. 

That’s what happened in New Jersey.  The crime?  A couple of the organizers had a cocktail or two and the big raffle barrel wasn’t rotated/mixed enough. Give me a break, please! The original suit was for $15,000, but PTO settled for $1,000.  And now their fundraiser is less successful, as well.  I hope these folks sleep well at night now that they’ve protected the world from wine-drinkin’, barrel-half-rotatin’ school volunteers.  Good grief.

If you are a school scheduled with VG for spring or a group owed money, we’d love to hear from you, as our editorial team is right in the middle of covering this story.  editor@ptotoday.com

Here’s a bunch more:

Massachusetts town uncovers 4 cases.

Illinois HSA victimized.

As always, here’s our feature on preventing theft in your PTO or PTA group.  These basics steps are worthwhile. Please.

1. They’re preventable with some basic checks and balances.
2. It’s the worst kind of theft, stealing playgrounds and field trips and classroom supplies from kids
3. (As the comments on that above-linked article show) they invite the worst kind of suspicions and chatter about the good work of PTOs and PTAs.

New Year’s Resolutions: don’t think this can’t happen at your school and don’t let this happen at your school.  And for good measure, get the modestly-priced PTO insurance that protects you even more.