Question: Is it allowable for an ASB club to give monies to the school district for specific teachers or programs? We have a club that raises money and gives some of it to district programs based on requests from various staff. Is this acceptable or should the funds that are raised be spent on the kids in the club for club activities?

Response: Funds raised by students should be spent to benefit students, and those items should be things the district does not - or historically has not - provided in the past. Adults in an organized ASB should avoid the appearance of attempting to influence how students allocate their funds, particularly when the expenditure would benefit their programs.

We are very uncomfortable with the practice as you describe it above as it appears staff are inappropriately influencing students to allocate ASB funds for teachers and/or programs. It also appears - without more information - that the ASB is funding items the district is responsible to provide, which is an inappropriate use of ASB funds. Even when the students vote to allocate ASB funds to support instructional or support programs, the mere act of student funds being allocated to support school/district programs is inappropriate.

We recommend you suspend the above-described practice and reevaluate against the standards noted in our response. You may wish to consult the FCMAT ASB Manual and Desk Reference which can be found at our web site at www.fcmat.org.  You should also consider consulting with district legal counsel before resuming these practices.

8/6/09