Starting in the 2024-2025 school year, ASG will be revamping the event and facilities approval process for the clubs and other organizations on campus. The new system will adapt the forms process to approve forms more quickly while still ensuring financial transparency in accordance with state guidelines.
The current process is to turn in a physical master calendar form for any official events, including proof of facilities if using school facilities. This is required for any events publicized as official events instead of club meetings or using facilities other than an advisor’s classroom. The master calendar form is the main form required for approval of a school event and it requires signatures from the club advisor, president, and event supervisor.
In addition to the initial master calendar form needed for the approval of an event, if a club wishes to use club funds to purchase food, materials, or anything else needed for any event, physical purchase approval forms are also required. Currently, all event planning processes are done on paper, with the exception of the google form clubs use to submit club meeting minutes. which was implemented this school year. This year, ASG began implementing and enforcing club meeting minute requirements where clubs had to hold meetings with at least two-thirds of their officers and any club members who wanted to attend in order to approve events that a club wants to plan or purchases that a club wants to make, similar to how ASG approves school events in their own state required business meetings.
The overall system was not the most productive, however, as activities director Mr. Willer voiced. “There were a lot of forms. Hundreds of master calendars and [purchase approval] forms, all had to be worked through and improved. It was becoming a difficult process, and we were spending a lot of time tracking down clubs to fill in missing pieces of information.”
To combat this, the approval system will now take place in advisory business meetings where club officers turn in their completed forms and get ASG approval within the same advisory period. Each club can send 1 representative to advisory business meetings in the cafeteria every week during advisory to have their master fundraising forms and purchase approval forms approved by the procedurals committee, finance committee, and student cabinet. These new business meetings replace the club business meetings students would have to have within their clubs, meaning the club business meetings minutes form implemented this school year will no longer be utilized.
The two types of forms that will be turned in and approved at these business meetings are the Master Fundraiser Form (replaces the Master Calendar Form) and the Approval to Spend Money (combines the purchase approval and check request into one two-part form).
The new Master Fundraiser Form is similar to the original master calendar form, with the biggest change being that the new form is only required for events where clubs will be raising funds and collecting money. This includes not only traditional fundraisers but also field trips where members pay to attend, shows where clubs sell tickets, and any other event where money is collected. The Master Fundraising Form will remain physical due to state regulations which require any event where a club selling a good or a service to have physical signatures and confirmation. As for events where clubs are not collecting money, they will be considered club meetings (on campus) or unofficial gatherings of club members for club activities (off campus). They will not be subject to the strict requirements that events collecting money must follow, but they also will not be able to engage in official promotions such as using the school-wide PA announcement system.
Changes to the purchase approval and check request processes are much simpler as they are being combined into the Approval to Spend Money Form. Now, clubs will fill out the first part of the Approval to Spend Money Form (adapted from the former Purchase Approval form), get it approved in the advisory business meeting, and get the form back in that same advisory business meeting process. After making the approved purchase, the club will then be able to fill out the second part of the Approval to Spend Money Form (adapted from the former Check Request form) and submit the entire form to Ms.Menke. This avoids the hassle of printing approved Purchase Approvals for the check request submission and prevents forms from getting lost in the system.
Another big change is the facility approvals system. Students will no longer have to individually contact facility managers. Instead, club advisors must request facilities through an online google form. This shift is due to the school district now managing all Irvington facilities and allowing the public to reserve and rent school facilities through Facilitron. Irvington clubs and student activities will have first priority to reserve facilities, but after August 1st, they will be competing with outside organizations and reservation of facilities will be first come first serve. Clubs will be able to access a master google calendar with information on facility availability, which will make facility reservation processes much smoother and less tedious.
“With these new changes we hope to make everything easier for clubs so that we can have more events on campus. We hope that the new system will make things a lot easier,” said 2024-2025 ASG Secretary Michelle Nguyen (10). “We’ve already started introducing the new procedures to some of the club officers of the larger clubs on campus and their feedback is that they think this is going to be easier for clubs as well.”
Mr. Willer echoes the same sentiment, commenting: “I would like to reduce the time spent doing paperwork, and be able to reinvest that into actually doing more events and things for the school campus. Our procedurals team and our finance team right now pretty much do paperwork every day, all day, every week.”
Although the numerous changes may take time to adjust to, it is apparent that these changes mark a significant shift in how events at Irvington will look in the future.
