Teachers shell out their own money for supplies
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To make up the difference, Roberts, like most of her colleagues across the county, state and nation, is forced to dig into her own pockets, to the tune of between $1,000 to $2,000 a year, to furnish her classroom with additional, yet necessary, teaching supplies.
“I’m sure I spend more than most, but we all spend something. I’d guess about it averages about $500 a teacher a year,” said Roberts. “A lot of it goes for extras, but sometimes it has to go for the basics, too. With a lot of things you either have to do without them or get them yourself.”
Teachers and principals from one end of the county to another were quick to agree. A sampling of county educators found teachers spending at least several hundred dollars of their own money on an array of items, from art supplies to books, from supplemental educational materials to cleaning supplies.
“This is just somethingthat’s always been done,” said West Elementary principal Marsha Newman, who herself has spent 23 years in the classroom. “It’s something we know we have to do and we do it because we want to have appropriate equipment.”
While teachers buying their own classroom supplies and other items has been a fact of teaching life for decades, the amount spent by teachers, while still considerable, has decreased somewhat in past years due to a number of factors.
The first of these factors is the passing of some costs on to parents, by way of supply lists sent home at the beginning of the school year. These lists include such items as glue, crayons, tissues, Ziploc bags, construction paper and the like. With an average cost of $25 per student, the lists save teachers money they often had to pay themselves in past decades.
“I don’t think a lot of parents understand why we have to ask for these things, but it’s because we barely get enough to cover just the necessities,” said West teacher Nancy McGregor.
With the adoption in the early ’90s of the BEP, the state’s education funding formula, each state teacher began receiving $100 a year in classroom money to spend however the teacher sees fit. The BEP further provides each teacher $100 in “pool money,” which is combined with that of other teachers in each school and used to purchase commonly used items like ink cartridges, copy paper and overhead projectors.
Most recently, a federal measure signed into law last year allows teachers to deduct up to $250 a year in classroom expenses from their federal tax returns, a move which seems to acknowledge that such spending is a de facto requirement for teachers.
When she was outfitting her classroom in July, first-year Bobby Ray Elementary teacher Brandie Mansfield says she was luckier than most first-year teachers in that she received many classroom items from her fellow teachers, which saved her a substantial amount of money.
“I’ve only spent about $200 so far, though it would be a lot more if I didn’t have help,” she said, adding it is often more convenient to buy items herself than to going through the time-consuming process of using her state-allocated money.
Asked why they continue to spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars of their own money, the answer given most often by teachers was their love of children and their desire to see them get the best education possible.
“Teachers have accepted it and that’s just the way it is,” said McGregor. “You do what you have to do.”