Probably never more than $15. My boss is really good about reimbursement.
Many years ago my wife was tired of hearing me complain about the crappy heavy-duty staplers our office had, so she got me one as an x-mas gift. Right around the same time I was travelling for my job, and the maximum hotel allowance wouldn’t cover the full price of the hotel room. It was only a couple of bucks, but it pissed me off that I would have to spend even a penny to travel OBO my job. After that, I have never knowingly spent a penny on my job. If the supplies and services my job provides result in a crappier product than needed, well, that’s their decision.
Having said that, following a reorganization some years back, our discretionary budget for supplies, travel, training, etc., seems to have increased significantly. Also, the main thing is to make your spending requests right around now, at the end of the fiscal year, when we want to spend any money left in the budget.
I just want to say thank you. I wish all teachers were as dedicated as you are to your students. Of course, it is also a shame on our society where teachers don’t have the all things they need.
If I had kids I’d hope they have teachers like you.
The most I can think of is mileage…sometimes I forget to ask for reimbursement. Otherwise, yes, I will ask for a $0.20 cell toll receipt. But then I don’t get paid much and am not going to do this out of the good of my heart.
I’m a teacher as well, and I just dropped (adds in head) $145 on art supplies, office supplies, and science resources for the new school year. I’m sure I’ll spend much more over the school year.
Some of it is convenience. I put off a big copying job until it’s past the deadline the school’s copy office will take, so I run it down to Kinko’s. Some of it is preference - the supplies available through the main office don’t meet my whimsy. Sometimes, I want it for me, to keep forever and ever. Sometimes, it’s simply that I know the school won’t or can’t spring for it.
Tuesday, I bought good acrylic paint to touch up a mural on my new classroom’s wall. I also bought a desk calendar, and the sixteen set of whiteboard markers, because I’m Just Not Happy with black, red, green, and blue. During summer school, I must have shelled out $30 on stickers because they were great rewards for hard work, and the kids went gaga over them. I expect that I will spend at least the $500 tax allowance on school supplies, but I don’t mind.
Well as a technician I had to buy my own tools. So about $80,000 at current prices.
My last job had a very liberal office supply ordering process, so I didn’t pay for a thing – not even the tissues on my desk. This job, on the other hand, has next to no office supply budget, and we have no say in what gets ordered and what doesn’t, so I’ve bought a few things myself: a pen holder, a few steno pads, some pens/pencils, etc. All told I’ve spent less than $30, though.
A few weeks ago I bought a personal copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional, because 1) I’m a technical writer/editor and have gotten used to being able to create and edit PDFs, and 2) I’m considering starting to do freelance work, and being able to create PDFs is a basic service (IMO). If I never do any freelance work the $420 I spent is just for personal use, but I’m hoping that someday it will fit in the “job supplies” category. 
Coupla hundred dollars over the past few years. Reimbursement isn’t a hassle even for the small stuff, it’s just another line on the mileage report. Chuck the receipt into a folder and edit a line on the spreadsheet. Then in a few months when it gets over $50, print it out and get the suprervisor to sign off.
Tools are another matter. They would reimburse me for them, but I prefer that they be my personal property.
One of my personal quirks is that I only write in blue ink if I have a choice. I don’t know where I developed this compulsion, but it’s there. My last job didn’t stock blue pens, so I brought in a couple of my own. I didn’t really consume anything else, so it wasn’t an issues. When I finish school and hopefully become a professor, I image that I’ll spend more, as I’ve found most universities have expense forms that make me want cry due to their shear complexity.
As a side note, when I was an undergrad, the professors had mentioned in their supply requests for both red and black white board markers. These could therefore be procured from their supply center at a reduced cost of eight cents. No other colors were specifically enumerated, and therefore cost a dollar. They found this amusing.
My husband and I were musing over the school supply issue recently, since we need to stock up our kids.
Neither of us recalled having to buy much of anything in elementary school, unless you wanted a special pencil box or something. I don’t think the teachers paid for the stuff either. Of course, classrooms were a lot simpler then.
Now, every kid has a long list of supplies every fall, including full-size boxes of Kleenex and rolls of paper towels to share with the classroom.
We try to help the teachers out–there are lots of fundraisers and each classroom gets the proceeds of the weekly bakesale once a year. It requires a lot of parent volunteer time, though.
Thousands as well. Also a teacher. There’s also all sorts of grey area, like meals for my academic decathlon team–not really something I’d expect school to pay for, and nothing my team really has to have, but it sure is nice to go out to eat after competition and Little Johnny can’t afford it, so I pick up the tab. Teaching is job/hobby/charity lumped together in a lot of ways. I enjoy it so tremendously that that makes up for a lot. Also, I am pretty compulsive about wanting things “just so”–I really could teach just fine without some of the things I pay for, but I am compulsive.
Phouka, I thought you were fed up with teaching in the Dallas area–you still around here?