Question:   The football program begins one week before classes reconvene. There are no ASB contacts during the summer. One of our parents was kind enough to purchase the helmet decals for the players, per the head coach’s request. Now the school admin is refusing to reimburse this parent based upon (what I call semantics) the fact that this purchase was not pre-approved by the ASB. There was past precedence for ASB to purchase this item and many others. What do we do?

Response: Education Code section 48933 regarding student body funds specifically says, "The funds shall be expended subject to such procedure as may be established by the student body organization subject to the approval of each of the following three persons, which shall be obtained each time before any of the funds may be expended:  an employee or official of the school district designated by the governing board, the certificated employee who is the designated advisor of the particular student body organization, and a representative of the particular student body organization."

So, your school administrator is disapproving the expenditure because there was not prior approval per education code.  Since this is an annual and reoccurring cost, based on what your question states, that prior approval could have been obtained prior to school ending (before summer), even though that may have seemed way too ahead of schedule.  Your administrator is correct.  Past precedent does not make this an allowable ASB expenditure; education code must be followed.

Maybe the booster club or another parent group would be willing to reimburse the parent. That’s the only legal option we can think of, other than the parent donating the cost of the stickers.

10/24/07