Members of the Montgomery County Council of PTAs found dozens of checks missing when reviewing the financials of the organization, leading them to inform police of possible embezzlement, the president of the council said Thursday.
The MCCPTA board of directors was reviewing the financial status of the organization in a March meeting when it noticed “one big glaring gap” in MCCPTA’s financial records, said Lynne Harris, who was elected president of MCCPTA during Tuesday’s delegates meeting.
In one instance, the numbers on the checks used to pay company expenses jumped about 35 or 40 numbers from one expense to the next, indicating all the checks in between were unaccounted for.
“Initially it was just, how come there’s such a gap?” Harris said. “Did somebody lose a bunch of checks? Did somebody steal a bunch of checks? Why is there this gap?”
After the meeting, the concerned board of directors established an internal audit team to more carefully review the finances of MCCPTA, which is an association of local parent-teacher and parent-teacher-student organizations, and attempt to track down the missing checks.
Ultimately, the audit team found about $39,000 in “inappropriate disbursements at various points this fiscal year,” Harris said. Former president Paul Geller filed a police report April 10 and the audit team later presented Montgomery County police with its full findings. Montgomery County Police are investigating possible embezzlement, though no one has been charged.
MCCPTA's bylaws require two signatories for each check, but banks don't always enforce that, Harris said. The organization's treasurer resigned in late March.
The $39,000 sum represents a significant portion of MCCPTA’s yearly budget, which Harris said is about $80,000.
However, Harris said there was some “in and out of funds,” and about $10,000 of misused money was returned to the MCCPTA bank account before the investigation began, leading to a net loss of about $29,000.
MCCPTA is funded by membership dues—$1 from the annual dues paid by all members of parent-teacher and parent-teacher-student associations in the county goes to MCCPTA, Harris said. That money is largely spent on special events and programming. The amount of annual dues is set by local PTAs and PTSAs.
Harris said MCCPTA is working with insurers and the bank to try to recoup as much of the lost funds as it can, but until the funds are recovered it will continue doing what it normally does—albeit on a tighter budget.
“What we’re doing right now is looking for ways to do a lot with a little,” she said. “The truth is we’re a PTA, so that’s what we do all the time.”
MCCPTA plans to hold most of the same events this year, Harris said—though one notable exception is the Presidents and Principals Dinner, the organization's largest event, usually held in May. The dinner includes an awards ceremony and is when the newly elected leadership for MCCPTA is installed, although officers assumed their positions at the April delegates meeting this year instead.
Harris said the dinner not being scheduled is unrelated to the embezzlement investigation underway, suggesting the dinner was instead simply never planned partly because it brought in less revenue than expected last year.
Though Harris said the event wasn't called off as a money-saving effort, she said it allows the MCCPTA to avoid one of its largest expenditures. The dinner usually has a budget of $8,000 to $12,000 paid for with MCCPTA funding and ticket sales.
MCCPTA has avoided another expenditure this year—a part-time employee position with a a $25,000 annual salary has been vacant since October.
As the investigation continues, local PTAs have been sending emails to their listservs to assure members that their dues are safe.
"The MCCPTA has been a strong voice for our county’s issues for many years, and this situation is very unfortunate," Angie Melton, PTA president for Walter Johnson High School, wrote in an email to members Thursday. "We have been assured by the MCCPTA audit committee that the membership dues have been segregated and that they have put safeguards in place to ensure that nothing additional happens."
