October Financials

Please take a moment to review the proposed budget for the 2012-2013 school year.  We invite you to attend the PTA meeting on September 4 at 7:00 pm to discuss in detail.

Did you know that the PTA balances and income statements are published on the website monthly?  Take a look at our Financials for August.

At our last PTA meeting on May 1, the PTA approved two wish list requests.  The first will provide $1269 to purchase bags of books, which may be checked out of the library by students and teachers for book clubs.  Each bag will include 10 copies of the same book as well as discussion topics for book clubs.  The PTA also approved $300 to go towards the purchase of an interactive projector (a newer version of the SMARTBoard) for music.  The music teachers plan to use other PTA funds that they’ve been allocated from this year’s and next year’s budget to make the $1650 purchase.

There were a number of other technology requests but only $4078 available for wish list purchases.  The PTA agreed to consider more funds towards technology along with other budget requests at the next PTA meeting on June 5.

Please join us at the June 5 PTA meeting at 7:30 in the library.  As a PTA, we are required to plan our fundraising revenue and budget for all expenses before each school year begins.  At this meeting, we will be discussing and voting on a budget for the 2012-2013 school year.  If you have any ideas about how we should raise or spend our money next year, now is the time to share those ideas.  The Executive Board has proposed a draft budget with target fundraising revenue of $71,450 and program expenses of $82,242.  Please feel free to review the draft budget in advance by clicking here:  Draft Budget.

Please come to the PTA meeting on Tuesday, May 1 at 7:30 pm to vote on “wish list” requests.  Once every year, staff members and parents present many ideas to the PTA about how we can utilize any extra funds that we may have at the end of the year.  That is how we built the gaga ball pit, installed the new sound system in the auditorium, and purchased many of the iPads for our students.

Given our projections for the current fiscal year, we have $4078 available for wish lists this year and potentially up to $10,278 if we reduce next year’s budget by $6200 relative to this year’s budget.  Parents and staff have submitted over $28,500 in wish lists requests.  Unfortunately, we do not have funds available to approve all wish lists, so it is very important that you come to vote on the amount that we will approve for wish lists and the individual ideas.  Please note that the more that we approve for wish lists, the less we will have for next year’s budget, so this vote is important for anyone with a stake in next year’s budget.  We recommend, in particular, that anyone with a wish list request come to the meeting to present his or her idea and answer questions. Please see the attached handout for more detail on the funds that we have available and the ideas proposed: Wish Lists 2011-2012.

We will be voting on a draft budget for next year at the June 5 PTA meeting.  The total amount of funds available for program expenses next year will be dictated by the amount of wish lists approved at the May 1 meeting, but we will not allocate the budget to specific areas until June 5.  If you have any suggestions for next year’s budget, you should send a written request to Jill Curran at treasurer@jamestownpta.org no later than May 11.  And be sure to attend the June 5 meeting to vote on the budget for next year.