Officials to be less strict with school bingo
22nd February, 2008
The PTA of Manchester's Waddell Elementary School has been hosting frequent bingo night for teachers, parents and students for some time now. The prize money in the bingo event hosted now was a basket of goodies. Aside from the main prize there were some additional treats, which resulted in every kid having something to go home with, even of it is just an ordinary pencil.
What the organizers did not know is that before conducting a bingo game they had to submit a mountain of paperwork, the content of which would register the game and ensure that the volunteers backgrounds were suitable for hosting such game. When the fund-raiser at east Catholic School went through this process, it resulted in Manchester’s public school officials to cancel the event. It was going to be PTA's "turkey bingo" which was a part of a pre-Easter "hambone bingo" event that had suffered a great deal from the outcome of such a lengthy process that seems unnecessary in many cases, but is still considered necessary by the government.
Some officials are trying to sort the problem by creating other regulations that would distinguish between “all-for-fun” and cash-orientated events. State Rep. Ryan Barry feels he’s got a measure that could give a clear shortlist that would differentiate between school events and big money games, which should no doubt be strictly regulated to protect the participants. Such big money events are usually hosted weekly in churches and VFW halls.
Ryan Barry thinks that PDA should decide on a yearly registration fee of some sort, disregard the need for background checks and make the obligatory paperwork much less complicated than it is now.
