There’s a gulf between what the OP’s link is talking about (see also doreen’s post #11) and teachers buying every last item used in their classroom. There is also a wide variation from school district to school district in the U.S.
Non-U.S. Dopers shouldn’t get the impression that all American public school teachers invariably buy every sheet of paper, crayon, pen, etc. for each and every student in all their classes. That might happen somewhere, but (from what I know) that would be extremely unusual – a teacher buying 100% of the supplies out of pocket for their class all year long, that is.
What is important to note for non-U.S. Dopers is that though it’s true that American teachers aren’t usually purchasing their class’s everyday consumable supplies … it’s at the same time true that American public school districts almost never purchase and supply consumables for their students. More typically, parents purchase their own children’s day-to-day supplies and also purchase some classroom-use supplies. School-supplies shopping in July and August is big business in much of the U.S.
Families that cannot afford to make these purchases can either (a) simply not provide them at all or else (b) they can avail themselves to various charities, school-supply drives, etc., some of which are better advertised than others. My son’s public school has a significant proportion of under-privileged children, so parents that do purchase supplies are given lists with suggested amounts of consumables (paper, pencils, etc.) to buy. The amounts suggested are more than one child would typically use throughout the year. The idea is to pool these consumables so that all children in the class – even if their parents did not purchase supplies – will have supplies to use.
There’s the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian whre some do-gooder is eagerly waiting by the road and offers to help some unfortunate soul “Here, brother, let me carry that cross for you.”
The fellow carrying the cross says “Oh, ok” hands him the cross and runs away. Then the centurions start whipping the do-gooder to get in line for his crucifixion.
This is the problem with super-cheap local voters, school boards, and teachers. teachers end up buying what the school board fails to provide, so the school board gets away with never providing necessities and this becomes the norm. No good deed goes unpunished. Needless to say, these same school boards rarely see a need to pay a decent wage, either, unless it’s the board office staff.
There’s a different category of supplies, though: staplers, tape, white-board markers, yard sticks, bulletin board supplies, card stock, desk organizers, alternate seating options (very, very popular in primary), classroom libraries, giant sticky notes, electric pencil sharpeners, hole punches . . . these aren’t things that ever show up on a supply list, but run from essential to very, very nice to have. IME, these are the sorts of things that teachers often end up spending a lot of money on and are largely invisible to parents.
Indeed. I am curious about the items in red above – whether or not those items are invariably given to teachers in non-U.S. public school systems. I would think a lot of teachers all over the world buy at least some supplies for their own use – especially classroom decor items (e.g. bulletin board supplies, subject-relevant posters, holiday decorations).
FWIW – at least at my kids’ schools – there are several “teachers’ supplies” items on our school-suggested shopping lists: tape, dry-erase markers, copy paper, etc. Though parents are meant to take the shopping lists seriously and purchase every item on the list … when push comes to shove, if a family can’t cover any or all the items, they won’t.
Additionally – both of my kids have been in classes where an extra supply fee – above and beyond the school supplies shopping list – has been solicited. It’s usually $10-20, and is more common in classes that will go through a lot of consumables or have expensive equipment (art, some science courses, music, etc.).
ISTR my son’s kindergarten teacher(or maybe it was the whole team?) putting out a list that included white board markers and card stock last year, because I remember going to buy those items on my lunch hour one day.
I remember that my mother had to buy books for her classroom. Not textbooks, but rather she had a reading area or center or whatever it was called, and she had to provide her own books for that, and since she rotated the available books with whatever the unit that she was teaching, she ended up buying literally hundreds of books over a 20-something year career.
The cynic in me thinks that this is an adaptive response to legal challenges based on equality.
The state mostly is no longer allowed to arbitrarily give more money to the wealthier districts off the top, but parents still want to provide their kids with a competitive advantage over those ‘other’ kids.
In order to accomplish the cutting of funding to schools in low-income areas without cutting funding to middle-class and better areas, the state cuts funding to ALL schools then the middle-class plus areas replace the lost funding directly out of pocket.
This is de facto the same as cutting education funding to low-income areas but is technically legal. It took a while for the systems to work this out, but I think the trend slowly began around the time of desegregation.
I think people on this board have complained in the past that their school requires them to purchase several boxes of pencils and turn them over to the teacher for common use.
Illinois state law forbids charging tuition for public schools, but in wealthier school districts, they have started charging fees for all sorts of other things: textbooks, parking, lockers, student ID cards, gym towels, extra-curricular activities (yes, pay to be on the football team), and even non-mandatory elective courses.
As for the second question: It is quite common to require mechanics and tradespeople to pay for their own tools. A typical automobile dealership mechanic has to spend five figures before getting his first job. And then he has to replace anything that breaks and update his tools as needed.
And to add insult to injury, the new tax law took away the deduction for employee expenses, so these things are no longer tax-deductible. However the special $500 tax deduction for teacher expenses did survive.
At least as far back as 1978, Fairfax County, VA schools were charging for gym outfits, towel fees, in gym class. There were also “Equipment fees” and transportation for the chorus, band, and school athletic teams.
I recall having a list of needed personal supplies in the 70’s and 80’s, but it was like, pencils and protractor for my own use. Celtling in the 2010’s and forward needed a bundle so big I worried about her ability to carry it. In addition to things like markers and crayons and scissors, there were: disinfectant wipes, kleenex, ziplock bags, expo markers, and copier paper . . .just everything imaginable.
For perspective: Ours has been consistently on of the top 3 best funded/resourced school districts in the country.
All of this is why my favorite teacher holiday gift has always been a gift card to the local teaching supply store.
My mom was a public school teacher and has been retired for 30 years or so. She always used her money to buy things for her classes in Canada. Not basics like chalk or paper or textbooks, but the fun stuff like posters, stickers and rewards. If she wanted it, she just bought it. I don’t think it had any real impact on her overall salary.
I do get a bit of a kick out of the mentality of different types of workers and the idea of using their money to buy stuff to make work better. I know a crown prosecutor (works for the government) who makes a large salary and wanted a certain piece of technology that cost maybe $500, and he couldn’t get it funded. I asked why he didn’t just buy it himself, he looked mortally offended.
Sadly, it’s not “extremely unusual”. At tuition-free charter schools, the norm is that the school supplies a room with a roof, maybe chairs and desks, and possibly a chalkboard, or possibly just a wall painted with chalkboard paint. And the families sending their kids to this sort of school generally either can’t or won’t put out any effort of their own to get supplies. Everything in that room has to come from somewhere, and there’s only one somewhere left.
Instead of asking for supplies, my child’s school just asks for money. That goes into a classroom supply fund, which the teacher is then able to spend as necessary. For the three years my kid has been in the school it’s been $40 every year. I don’t know how much people spend on school supplies, so I don’t know if that’s comparable. I do like not having to worry about school supply shopping and organizing. I hope that fund prevents the teacher from having to spend her own money. Kids still have to buy some required personal use items, like a backpack, headphones, and water bottle.
Thinking about it, my Great Uncle, who was a teacher in the UK around 45-30 years ago, basically ran the school library from his private book collection. Iirc, the school originally only had a small and, in the opinion of a serious book addict, entirely inadequate one.
Other than that, my own UK experiences were that you brought your own pencils, pens and protractors, but things like paper and notebooks would all be provided. You had the option to bring your own notebook for doodles and notes if you’d rather, but everyone got issued with one on the first day of the class for all marked work, plus a ‘rough book’ for doodles.
If you forgot your pen or pencil, the teachers normally had a box of pens and a box of pencils, plus some ancient wooden rulers you could borrow, which they did not buy individually, they were bulk ordered, and teachers could request stuff like posters (though I think we mostly had free ones from the BBC). They’d sometimes ask us for suggestions for what equipment we were low on, when order time was coming up.
My brother’s school, on the other had, did send out an annual donation request for money for consumables; I only found that out later, as my brother didn’t even bother bringing it home, until they started posting it. According to him almost all the students considered this annual begging letter to be cheap and nasty and few parents donated (one classmate whose parents coughed up every year nicked batteries and glassware to the approximate value of what his parents had paid). At one point the school even attempted to encourage it by instituting a rule where they could only become eligible to be an ‘elected form representative’ if their parents paid a minimum donation, and everyone was so disgusted that only one kid in his class was eligible to be elected, two years in a row (I think this was the battery thief, just to add comedy). His school was unusual and very old fashioned in many ways though, being a state school that also took private boarders, and none of my friends at other schools got money requests.
The New Orleans metro area is a charter-school hotbed. The charter schools here are not like the ones you describe, however. If the local public schools have it, the charter schools will as well. Local charter schools receive local-government funding**, though – that may not be the case all over the U.S.
*** Basically, all charter schools do here is take the same dollars the local parish school board would spend on a public school and use it to run a charter. Essentially, the local parish school boards are outsourcing the management of dozens of schools.*
It’s fairly common for many trades to be required to provide their own tools. It’s not quite like a teacher providing consumable supplies to students but a run of the mill mechanic may need $10k plus in tools/boxes for working on peoples cars. In theory if they leave a job they’ll still have the tools they paid for.
I’m in a plumbing related trade. I provide tools for my guys, but that is not the norm, they are welcome supplement tools of their choosing. Just the service tool bag I carry into peoples homes, with electrical meters, is about $2k in tools.
Well, I can only speak for the Cleveland area. Most of the charters around here get funding from the state (that’s how they’re able to not charge tuition), but I don’t know if it’s the same amount that a truly public school would. But how much money they’re getting doesn’t necessarily reflect how much money is actually going towards education, and most of them (which are run by large companies with dozens of schools each) seem to take the approach that the less that goes to unimportant things like education and building maintenance, the more goes to profits.
In any event, I can tell you that I’ve seen with my own eyes a school where I’d be getting, literally, an empty room with chalkboard paint on one wall, not even any furniture, and another one where there was furniture, but you had to sit on the edge of the seat or the chair would fall apart.
Not sure how American states work, but in many areas of Canada, the local property taxes pay for school boards - plus a “per student” stipend from the province. Therefore, the province (and I presume the states) give the same amount by definition, and the disparity is built in to the geography = the richer areas have higher property taxes.
How would a state even manage to allocate funds unequally? What logic and formula?
I remember one place I used to live where the local parents got very upset when the school board demanded a book deposit ($50 I think) even though it was allegedly refundable if all textbooks were returned.
Here there is an occasional attempt to push the province to provide the full school board payment and remove the property tax school component to equalize the school boards.
Plus, the municipalities hate the system because they have zero control over the school boards but are forced to add the school levy to the municipal tax bill, so tend to get the blame for rising taxes.
Note here the provinces tend to hold the purse strings on major capital expenditures, so new schools and school expansions need provincial approval.
Here in S. GA, how supplies are given out to teachers vary from system to system and often from school to school. I worked in one system where chalk, paper clips, copies, and staplers were in plentiful supply. Our department (H.S. science) also had a budget we could spend for our sciency needs (dissection specimens, cover slips, chemicals, etc.) I also worked in another system where were lucky to get enough dry erase markers, and copies were restricted. To get science supplies, we submitted a list at the end of the year and maybe got some of it for the next year.
Yes, I often spent my own money on supplies. It was simply easier than jumping through the hoops necessary. If spending $5-$10 half a dozen times a year helped my kids learn and my day go easier, I guess it was worth it.
I don’t think any public educational system is without sin. It’s only the degree to which it sins that that varies.
To build on MD2000’s comments:
In Ontario - the schools are generally well funded for the basic supplies. The many lower grade teachers I know have rarely complained about a lack of basics like texts etc. If they buy anything out of their own pocket, its usually things like class decorations for holidays like Valentines day, halloween etc. The biggest complaint of high school teachers I know is that texts are sometimes falling apart, as opposed to not having them.
In Ontario, individual school funding is dependant on the individual municipal school boards and how they allocate the funds they receive. Some school boards are very well run and some are very poorly run.
One of the biggest issues is that the group that sets the local priorities are locally elected trustees. While electing them sounds like it should make them accountable, the problem is that once elected, they become too accountable. Their primary goal is to stay in power (they’re very well paid) and this prevents them from making difficult decisions because it may cost them votes.
As an example - my kids were in the Toronto school board. Over the 90’s and into the 2000s, the total board had lost over 100,000 students due to changing demographics and population movement etc. However, during that period they hadn’t laid off a single staff member (teacher or admin) or closed a single school.
One school near us was operating at 10% capacity, 100 students across 8 grades (JK to grade 6), yet the school less than 1km down the road was well over capacity and had 8 portables to house the extra students. [Side note: In Toronto, students can only attend the single school for which they’re assigned, based on their home address. There are very rigid boundaries and up to grade 9 it’s almost impossible to change schools from your designated zone.)
Our local elected trustee would not support closing the under-capacity school and shifting the resources to the over-capacity school. He wasn’t willing to risk losing the votes of the parents who would be upset at having to get their kids to a school that was 10 minute walk further away.