Article

Does anyone have any unique ideas on what to spend P&C funds on?

6 January 2022

Reader question:

Does anyone have any unique or simple ideas on what to spend P&C funds on? Something individual for each student or something for the school. We possibly have up to $7000 to spend.

Our Facebook community had plenty of good ideas on ways to spend P&C funds:

Outdoor classroom if you don’t already have one
An outdoor shade sale
New entry signs or notice boards
Play equipment or soft fall for under playground equipment
Paint jobs around the school
Projectors
Update staff room or upgrade canteen in someway
Sports equipment
Purchase musical instruments or pay someone to come in one day a week and teach music. If the school curriculum won’t allow time for it, maybe make it a lunchtime thing. Ie. Wednesday’s in the library XX will be holding ukulele lessons.
A huge Christmas party for the entire school – have a magician come in or have Santa come in on a fire truck or police car and have a huge fun water day with food afterwards.
Mud kitchens
Do an end of year BBQ & ice blocks for the whole school – cheap and fun!
Sensory garden
Library book upgrades
iPads or computers
What about sound-limited wireless bluetooth headphones for the kids
Snow cone machine and have a snow cone day (it’s something you can use for events in years to come too)
Rugs for junior years floor
Soccer nets
Have hopscotch & other games painted onto the cement
Replace some water fountains with taps for bottle refilling
Our money has gone towards new blinds for classrooms, mini and multi lit programs, rainy door board games for all classrooms, electronic signboard.
See if you can pay for a really fun excursion – maybe young engineers or The Root Cause Mad Food Science Programme.
Do you have to spend it all? We have a future projects fund that we have put a % of funds to
We are going to purchase some class set of Millie the Mathmetican/ Suzie the scientist reader books
What about some electric sharpeners for the classrooms? Our teachers still rave about the ones we got them 3 years ago.
We contribute about $3,000 each year for camp, to reduce the out of pocket expense for parents. We also put a free sausage sizzle lunch with a drink and snack on the last day of school as a thank you to the kids.
My older children’s high school put on some water slides and games to reward students for positive attendance and behaviour
If you have a bell you could upgrade it to a music bell. We have different music that plays throughout the day. We also use it as a reward system and let the students choose the songs.
A movie night for the school community
Extra seating around the school for the kids or a buddy chair
Bike racks
New plants or raised veggie garden and supplies
We put in a fitness obstacle track around the oval
You could do a voucher for $$ for each child to spend on school book list/ fees or the uniform shop ($7000÷number of children)

Here are some ideas on granting wishes with the funds:

Talk to each teacher and see what they normally buy from their own money every year and supply a box to each class for start of next year (I know our teachers are always buying stickers, books rewards etc from their own pocket)
How about you create a wish tree? That way people can write their wish list on a leaf and put it on the tree. Not all wishes can be granted but you will get an amazing idea of what to aim for 😊
This year we asked each class for a wish list and spent $100 per class on getting things class teachers asked for. We ended up buying things like board games, cushions, prizes etc. The teachers and students loved it.

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Originally published 26 March, 2019