3/2/2024 0 Comments Teacher out of pocket expensesA pay raise was one of the five “demands,” as they called them, but it wasn’t even the first demand. The big misconception was that teachers were complaining that they weren’t getting paid enough. I try to lessen the load of what I expect them to give me. A lot of those things, parents either can’t afford, or they have so many kids to buy for. Part of that is being at a Title 1 school. When the kids came in for Meet the Teacher day, I already had markers, pencils, crayons, colored pencils, and whiteboard markers. What the money’s spent on: School supplies for 32 kids, organizational tools Grade and subject: 3rd grade, all subjectsĪmount school allots each classroom: $200Īmount spent out of pocket at the beginning of each school year: $300Īmount spent out of pocket replenishing supplies throughout the year: $200 These conversations have been edited for length and clarity.ģrd grade teacher Hannah Perkins (second from left) buys school supplies for all her students. These interviews reveal a bigger picture of school funding inequity, undervalued educators ( three-quarters of whom are women), and a systemic economic deprioritization of education. We learned that educational materials purchased at online marketplace Teachers Pay Teachers fill in the many gaps created, in part, by insufficient district curriculum, though most of the teachers we talked to wish that their districts would just give them something to work with. We learned that many teachers fundraise for supplies through sites like DonorsChoose, except if they’re in a district that bans crowdfunding. We learned that some Title 1 schools - where at least 40 percent of students come from low-income families - receive some kind of classroom stipend, but that’s not a universal reality, and they typically can’t count on much of a PTA presence either. We talked to seven teachers across the country to learn what they spend their own money on, how they try to save, how they strategize any school allotments, and more. School supplies are just the start of it - let’s talk about further education and professional development, about college application fees, about extra sandwiches, about books, about winter clothes, about eyeglasses, about curriculum (yes: curriculum - many districts forgo textbooks, or supply decades-old textbooks, or provide only the most bare-bones of worksheets, leaving it on teachers to cobble together their own instructional materials). That lack of resources feels to some educators like insult to injury, not just that they need to spend their own money to do their job, but that their low pay makes it hard to even afford to do their job.ĩ 4 percent of US public school teachers spend their own money on school supplies. The fact that teachers buy stuff for their classrooms is another way to say that we fail to provide teachers with the resources they need to teach our kids. According to the Pew Research Center, one in six teachers work second jobs. The NEA found that one-fifth of new teachers leave education within three years, and in urban areas, the percentage of teachers who leave within five years is close to half. Put simply, teachers are underpaid, and many are leaving education at an alarming pace. The National Education Association highlighted a $40,000 discrepancy between what the average teacher makes in New York versus what one makes in Mississippi, where the average salary in 2018 was $44,926 New York’s top salary ranking drops to 17th, however, when adjusted for cost of living. The amount per year varies what districts and schools provide (or, better put, don’t provide) varies. 94 percent of US public school teachers spend their own money on school supplies. Schools don’t typically supply this stuff. There’s often furniture and a mini-fridge, there are tissues and Clorox wipes and sometimes a class pet. When you walk into a public school classroom, what do you see? Posters on the walls, baskets of scissors and glue sticks and pencils, dry erase markers, copied and stapled worksheet packets, shelves and bins of books, decorations commemorating the seasons, sometimes bean bag chairs or floor pillows, definitely some kind of big rug for the younger grades.
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