Halifax District PTA News

November, 1995


Upcoming Meetings:

Please note the following upcoming meetings:

November 20, 1995:

Special Joint Meeting of Halifax District PTA / Halifax District School Board, AV Room, Oxford St. School, 7:30 PM

This meeting will be focusing on Peace in the Classroom, and will follow up on the discussions of this subject at the joint PTA/Board meeting in May.
December 4, 1995:

Library, Oxford St. School, 7:30 PM

David Landry will be making a special presentation on Strategic Planning, including activities in the 9 schools selected for implementation this year, and an update on the 12 implementation planning teams being established to work on specific system-wide initiatives. He will also be available for a general question and answer session on strategic planning.


Constitutions

We are often asked for examples of constitutions, when new PTA's are being set up, or an existing one is reviewing its mandates.

The Halifax District School Board has agreed to maintain a file of the constitutions of the various PTA's in the city, so that they will be readily available when we need them.

If you have not already done so, please bring a copy of your PTA's constitution (and by-laws if you have them) to the next meeting, and we will arrange to have it stored at the Board for future reference.


Financial Accountability

When people donate their time and money to support the education of our children, it's very important to show our appreciation by letting them know how our fund raising efforts are doing, and what we have done with the money raised.

There are a lot of organizations out there trying to raise money, and we will be a lot more successful in our fund raising if people understand what they are supporting when they contribute.

This was the subject on an interesting discussion at our September meeting. It appears that there is sometimes some confusion about who is responsible for funds raised through schools.

Where the PTA sponsors a fund-raising activity, the PTA as a separate legal body from the school or the school board is accountable for those funds. The PTA has custody of the funds, controls how they are used, and should provide an accounting to the parents outlining both the sources and the amounts of funds raised, and how those funds were spent.

On the other hand, fund-raising activities may be sponsored by the school itself. In that case, it is the school principal who is accountable for the custody, control and use of the funds.

If you are not sure who is sponsoring the fund raising, just ask your principal or PTA representatives.


INTERNET Update

We are now up and running on the Chebucto Community Network. Please note that the information in the August newsletter about our location there was incorrect. From the CCN homepage, we are located under "Education and Libraries", then "Primary to Grade 12". You can find us right after Prince Andrew High School.

If you're using another internet provider, this is our address on the World Wide Web:

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Education/HDPTA/hdptahome.html

Our E-Mail address is: ip-hdpta@chebucto.ns.ca

We seem to be averaging about 120 to 150 visits to our homepage every month. Following are some of the things you can access there: