Question: Can an Athletics Trust buy a lawn tractor to maintain the football and baseball fields? Or is that the district's responsibility?

Response: Student body funds must be used to promote and finance a program of worthwhile activity beyond those provided by the district. State law also requires that all student body expenses be pre-approved. In high schools and middle schools the student organizations are called organized student body associations because the students organize their activities around student clubs and a student council. The students are involved in deciding how the ASB funds are spent.

Because the distinction between allowable and unallowable expenses can be very confusing, school district governing boards should adopt rules and regulations by which the student body is governed. If your district's governing body has not adopted such a policy for student body accounts, it should do so to establish parameters for the operation of the ASB accounts and to help determine whether certain costs are allowable or not.

Expenditures must directly promote the general welfare, morale, or educational experience of the students to be an allowable use of student funds. In addition, student body funds cannot be used for expenditures that are the responsibility of the district or any other entity. In order to determine the right entity to pay for the lawn tractor, it is important to know who purchased the tractor in the past. If the tractor were a new item, and no entity purchased such a machine in the past, student body funds could be used for the costs. Of course, the students would need to agree with the expenditure by pre-approving it and the tractor would need to be used exclusively (or most of the time) for extra curricular events (athletics). If the situation was different and the cost of the tractor had been the responsibility of another source (i.e. boosters or district) in prior years, student body funds could not be used. If the tractor had been paid for from student body funds in the past, then the cost could continue to be paid from ASB funds if the students again pre-approve the expenditure and it is used exclusively or at least most of the time, by extra curricular athletics.