School fund rules hard to follow

  To help the public understand how a teacher might make the decision to violate district finance policies, I offer the following scenarios that may have played out on the Yuma High School campus.

  - A teacher requests a purchase order for merchandise needed for a club fundraiser. Three weeks later, the teacher receives the purchase order and takes it to a vendor to obtain the merchandise. At the checkout counter, the teacher is told that the vendor is sorry, but they do not take purchase orders from the district as the district has a bill outstanding.

   The teacher knows that without the merchandise, the fundraiser is doomed so he uses his own money to purchase the items and reimburses himself with the profits from the fundraiser. This, of course, is against district policy.

  - A teacher's club has been provided a one-week window to sell merchandise. Having properly obtained the merchandise to sell, the club sells out in three days. In order to obtain more merchandise, the club will have to request a purchase order, which takes about three weeks to obtain.

  Thus, the one-week window will be over before more merchandise is procured. So the teacher decides to purchase additional merchandise with profits from the sales of the first three days in order to have more merchandise for the last two days of the fundraiser. Again, this is against district policy but truly understandable.

  - A teacher has a fundraiser in which each student in the club is provided a baggy containing 10 items to sell. As the student sells a baggy full of items, he returns the money to the teacher and obtains another baggy. The teacher then logs in the amount of money received and places the money into his file cabinet until he or the club's treasurer is able to get it to the bookstore

  Unfortunately, the bookstore is closed at that time so the teacher must keep the money until the bookstore is open at a time that it is convenient for the treasurer or teacher to deposit the money. The teacher may be able to put the money in the school safe if he can make it to the front office prior to the time those who have access to the safe leave. Of course, the money may not be safe in the safe as I understand it has been broken into several times in recent years. Sometimes it's impossible to follow policy.

  - A teacher's club has a fundraiser on the weekend. All money received from this fundraiser will not be able to be deposited until Monday at the earliest. In addition, if the fundraiser occurs in the evening, the money must be kept in the teacher's possession until at least the next morning when the bookstore opens. Sometimes it's impossible to deposit money the day of a fundraiser.

  - A school administrator brings a $1,000 check to the student store and asks that it be used throughout the school year in order to purchase merchandise from the store as needed for gifts for guest speakers or retirees or whatever. The teacher observes this and determines that it must be an acceptable practice. Unfortunately the school administrator is not following district policy.

  - A meeting is held between a teacher and an assistant superintendent of finance for the district. At this meeting it is decided that in order to efficiently supply and resupply the student store, a purchase order should be requested delineating the most often purchased items from the vendor.

  The teacher is then to sign that he received these items even though he has yet to receive all of them. The money that the vendor holds will then be used to resupply the student store. This assistant superintendent leaves the district but as this was common practice, the teacher continues to utilize this procedure. Unfortunately, it is against district policy.

  Amazingly enough, if the club utilizes a booster club for fundraising, many of these procedures would be absolutely fine as they are not held to the same financial standard.

CHERYL JOHNSTON, Yuma