Classroom's Costly Lessons Cuts Force Teachers to Forage for Supplies

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39981-2003Aug24.html

Myrna Thurnher went to a teachers convention in New Orleans last month and shamelessly grabbed not a couple, but 50, of the red pens given as freebies. She walked around the room after one session to collect leftover notepads.

Her loot has found its way to Woodbridge Senior High School in Prince William County, where Thurnher is a special-education teacher. Whether she is traveling to a conference or on vacation, she said, she never leaves a hotel without at least a pen for her students. Her motto: "Anything free makes its way back to my classroom."

At a time when Virginia, Maryland and other states face massive budget deficits, craftiness is a much-needed quality among public school teachers, who say they find themselves having to spend more of their money to supply their classrooms. For some, these out-of-pocket expense items include not only decorative posters, but also such essential items as pencils, glue bottles, scissors and facial tissues.

A recent nationwide survey, by the National School Supply and Equipment Association in Silver Spring, found that teachers spent an average of $589 of their own money on supplies in 2001, up from $448 in 1999.

The federal government has begun to notice. Last year, President Bush signed into law a $250 federal tax credit for educators who spend their own money on classroom materials. The credit was extended to this year. Now, the National Education Association, whose membership includes 2.7 million teachers -- and some lawmakers, including Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) -- is lobbying for a permanent and much larger tax credit that would cover supplies and professional conferences.

[mjb4]

1. STOP THE LIES!!!!!

teachers and students have MORE than enough supplies. I visited a school once where the construction paper for one class was to the ceiling and it was Februrary! STOP THE LIES. Teachers make more than enough money they work a 9 month schedule with several weeks of paid vacation during that time. AND we give teachers too much unearned credit. These are some of the same teachers raping our children and convincing them to kill unwanted spouses for them. TEACHERS are not all what they are cracked up to me but most are CRACKED UP!

[M155Y_A1CH]

2. Uneducated or Unwashed?

I see that you obviously know absolutely nothing about it.

[alcuno]

3. Hey! Knock that off! I mean it!

I don't even know where to start with your post so I'll just say that just because you visited a school once and they had an excessive amount of construction paper does not mean that schools around the country have more than enough supplies.

Oh. And I can only think of one teacher who convinced a student to murder her husband and she's in prison. Are there more? Teachers are raping children? Where do you live? Maybe it's time to move.

And another thing. Teachers are paid for working 9-10 months. We'd be more than willing to work year round with an applicable salary adjustment. We're not just slacking off on summer vacation, you know. Think of it as getting laid off and re-hired every year. It's very stressful.

On Edit: <It's very stressful>

[veganwitch]

4. you're being sarcastic right??

good gravy

[mjb4]

6. No, I am very serious...

the teacher crisis is a big LIE! Most teachers own homes in the surburbs and drive two cars. There is nothing suffering about them. And teachers are raping (dating) students every day! And we also know about the teacher that had two children for a student...Get your head out of the sand.

[Name removed]

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[no_arbusto]

40. As the son of two teachers...

You are way out of line. Did I grow up in the suburbs? Yes. But was that house paid for on teacher's salaries alone? No.

My parents, like many teachers, always worked year round. When they were younger, they owned a home decorating store as well as multiple rental units. My father has had a summer painting and roofing business since he was 25 (he's 55 now and can still climb a ladder as well as any college student). Several of his fellow teachers have worked with him in the summer for 20+ years as well. My mother has either tutored neighborhood kids or worked with developmentally disabled kids every summer. Many of their teacher friends own businesses, rental units, and do side work as well. The ones that don't? Well, I've worked on a few of their houses for my father's business and I've seen how some of them live. They definitely wouldn't fit your stereotype of teachers living in a palatial suburban home.

Do my parents live comfortably now? Yes. But that came with alot of work and dedication. That's something that most teachers have. When you see these teachers not "suffering", perhaps it's because they are intelligent, hard working people who made the right decisions with their time and money. Shit, PA is one of the highest paid states for teachers and I still hear of salaries that start in the low 20's.

I won't even address your other points. It sounds like you may have some issues to discuss with your shrink.

On edit: Oh yeah. They also have to go back to school every so often and get credits. You don't see too many other professions where 55 year olds have to spend their evenings, and money, on college courses so that they meet state requirements.

[LizW]

5. Stunned by that tirade

I can only say that I hope you don't have any children.:(

[mjb4]

7. I do and he knows I hate teachers

so there!

[BuddhaGirl]

12. you "hate" teachers?

"all" teachers? Nice example to set for your kid. :puke:

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[truth2power]

25. This is a serious question.

How does someone get 1000+ posts around here and post stuff like this? It isn't even a well-reasoned argument.

You are probably right, htuttle, that's it's probably a student with an axe to grind. My question above stands, however.

[gratuitous]

26. Heck, I've got over 1,000 posts

But I'm just comic relief, not bull goose crazy.

Seriously, you can rack up a quick thousand by running around making "me too" posts pretty easily. Raw numbers mean very little. Gold stars (or lack thereof) can give you a fuller picture.

[salin]

27. Sometimes

folks just have a particular bug up their spine - and a wild knee-jerk reaction (with logic flying out the window) when that particular bug gets touched... but on other topics/issues can be as sane and progressive as the next person. Hence if the topic doesn't come up - the particular kneejerk (and in this case rather strange) response is never evoked.

I actually can see some legitimate critiques of the profession, and/or of the professional training/development we give to teachers (have been involved in classrooms and at U.s) And most certainly even an airing of legitimate concerns would lead to some flames here. However - this particular outburst is quite unique in its absense of data and logic - and broad sweeping vitrolic generalizations. That makes it stand out - and makes me think it might be one persons particular bug - tied up with something unrelated to the topic at hand.

[Name removed]

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[TahitiNut]

19. "Welfare Cadillac Redux"

Same ol', same ol'. (Get thee to a logician.) :eyes:

[Name removed]

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[damnraddem]

34. You don't know what you're talking about.

My son's school was short on TEXTBOOKS last year. Supplies? Forget it!

There are plenty of lousy teachers, teachers who don't want to push the students, teachers who have little grasp of the subjects they're asked to teach -- but good teachers are in the same boar with the lousy ones. Our country, all states, underfunds schools, pays teachers disgracefully-low wages, and then expects teachers to fund supplies from those low wages. Those free summers? Yeah, free for school districts, which don't have to pay the teachers then, and that are cutting back on summer school, short-changing children and decreasing summer work for teachers. Meanwhile, the teachers spend part of their summers getting continuing education, at their own expense.

[booksenkatz]

36. Thanks for that

I come from a family of teachers and was so taken aback by that poster that I refrained from replying lest I say something extremely offensive! I've spent 42 of my 42 years of life watching what good teachers go through, it's breathtaking. I've seen adult men and women half sick with worry in May because they still don't have any jobs/work lined up for the summer and don't know how they're going to support their families. It's not easy to find a good job that will support your family for 3 months each year. My dad and brother usually painted houses if they didn't have any summer school classes to teach. I've seen good teachers spend money out of their own pockets just to make sure that a child from a low-income home had underwear, food, supplies, etc. I've seen good teachers give up their evenings and weekends to read essays about goats and grade papers, in between trying to do their own homework for the extra degrees that are mandated. I hardly ever saw my dad when I was growing up because he had to work 2-3 jobs to supplement his teaching income.

So I don't appreciate it when someone attacks teachers. There are bad apples in every barrel.

Up here in Michigan, it seems to me that the schools are much better funded than they were in Texas, but still woefully lacking. When are we going to invest in education in this country? Schools should have more money than they know what to do with, so that every child has a clean and well-maintained school building, good teachers, plenty of supplies, plenty of healthy food, a low teacher-student ratio, plenty of funds for uniforms for their activities. Students shouldn't have to sell cookies to raise money for their education. Can you imagine the kind of citizens that would result if we started children out on the right track in this country?

[Furity]

38. Amen, Amen

I could not have said it any better than you. I don't even want to try...I might get too nasty. I grew up in a family of teachers, and trust me, there are NONE that are more hard working than them. In addition, I am a room mother every year and try to supplement their meager supplies. I do it for my child, and every other child. Because I truly believe it is important. (Cuss words deleted).

~Furity

[wellstone_democrat]

39. that is one of the sickest posts

I have yet seen on this forum in over 3 years. Absolutely pathetic and libelous as well.

[Squeech]

10. This is typical and very true

I have a bunch of friends who teach. They've all got problems of this nature. Often they don't have enough textbooks to go around-- sometimes they don't have any-- so they spend big chunks of their weekends at Kinko's photocopying the next week's readings. I gave one teacher friend a carton of three-ring binders my office threw away, so she could prepare workbooks for her class.

The worst schools are, of course, inner city. One friend of mine joined Teach for America (you know, the very successful program that BushCo has just de-funded) and was assigned to a school in the South Bronx-- and couldn't even get enough *pencils* to go around!

I don't know where this warehouse full of construction paper was, but I'd bet my bottom dollar it was a suburb kept affluent and white by snob zoning.

[Name removed]

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[veganwitch]

20. someone like...

brian jacques? thats what your sig reminds me of.

[gratuitous]

15. Perhaps . . .

Perhaps if your wild accusations had some basis in time and place, they'd be taken a bit more seriously. As it stands now, they're nothing but slander on a profession, and folks here who actually listened to their teachers when they were in school will have the brains to ignore you.

[Name removed]

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[Squeech]

22. mjb4: where are you?

Note that the corporations that hold these drives are also located in these same wealthy suburbs. The big employers in the inner city are Mickey D's, and Ronald isn't holding any school donation drives.

Apparently there's a statistical anomaly: a disproportionate number of teachers have a lot more money than their neighbors. It showed up in this book, The Millionaire Next Door, which basically says that the way you get to be a millionaire has a lot more to do with how wisely you use the money you make than how much it is. And it turns out that, as a statistical class, teachers save a lot more than most of us. It may have something to do with skills learned when you have to stretch two dozen magic markers among three dozen kids in class.

But I've noticed that "Teachers make too much money" has been a right wing talking point since at least the Proposition 13 tax revolt in California, and whenever *they* speak of entrenched special interests, they're generally talking about the NEA. Back then there was a bumper sticker that remains one of my great favorites: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!"

[salin]

24. I believe, that in some states a teaching license

requires a post-baccelaureate degree (meaning you take the teaching classes after one has completed a bachelors degree). This means 5 or six years in college for a starting salary of under $30,000. Ya these folks are raking in the dough.

I would challenge the assertion that teachers (generalized to all) our "raping" our children. There have been a few egregious cases, no doubt. However - to generalize to all teachers one needs to demonstrate that it is a pervasive problem and represents a significant proportion of the entire teaching population. One teacher in five thousand (just guessing a number here) does not generalize to ALL teachers.

I have worked in schools where teachers had to horde DITTO sheets (not even xerox) because supplies were so tight. Urban and rural schools often do not have the tax base or the economy of scale to afford as much in supplies or other essentials to which suburban schools often have access.

[mjb4]

28. Yeah, right go ask LA teachers about

their SALES TAX bonuses!

[salin]

31. Is that because

many have to stretch the budgets out - and often spend out of pocket for supplies? I think a study a year ago showed that most teachers spend more than $300 a year out of pocket on their classrooms?

There is so much bitterness in your posting. Do you feel that all teachers are awful and over paid? What is a comparable pay rate for new and advanced professionals in your field who have degrees?

[haele]

18. Agree with you there

Obviously this person lives in a fairly affluent area where there's still a lot of homeowners, and a small school district at that. We've got just one school district in the five in our county where the teachers are provided with everything they need, and that's the small one that only covers 20 sq. miles of community where there's a lot of home owners, has one high school, two middle schools, and four elementry schools. All the rest have varying degrees supplies and maintenence - and county-wide, only about 20% of the teachers make that "good maximum wage" this poster - all the rest make just above what's considered the local assistance level, and generally need to have their spouses work a better job than they do just so they can have "that house and two cars".

BTW, most "office school supply drives" supply only enough materials for perhaps about one month in a any given district.
Considering that most mid-sized companies with 50 - 100 employees use about $500 just in administrative supplies (copy paper, pens and pencils, binders, post it notes, etc) a month for just one office - not counting the overhead of building cleaning and maintenance supplies, network and telephone supplies, etc, etc, etc - you generally find that a school with around 300 kids will go through over $10,000 in school supplies on average a year just on the kids - and supplies and school maintenance supplies the administration side of the house for a school that size goes through usually runs about $40K a year.
You also have increasing or decreasing costs depending on what sort of classes a school has - a good science program in a middle school can run over $50K just in the supplies to do the projects in class - not counting paper, textbooks, test supplies, writing utensils...

In most school districts, there's getting to be around 800 students per school, so do the math.

Probably about 7 - 10% of the school districts in the country have it so good as this poster's, as to have enough supplies that the teacher doesn't have to go to Costco or Smart and Final once a month to buy pencils, paper or other supplies, or have his or her spouse copy textbook synopsis they type up on their own computers at the company the spouse works just to offset the costs of school supplies that just aren't there.

BTW, sir or madam with the very lucky school district and typical attitude shown by the average winger " stay at home skooler just let other taxpayers spend enuf money to teach my kids how to work as slaves for a big boss instead of teaching them to think for themselves and leave me and my posessions alone" type, are you sure that construction paper on the ceilings wasn't there to hide the holes in the ceiling panels that hadn't been repaired in two years? or were on windows to hide the cracks and holes in the glass?

Spend some time tutoring at the school and educate youself as to what really goes on in schools.
Or just take your kids out of your apparently morally failing but educationally affluent school district and teach them at home yourself - or in some private church school. I'm sure there's quite a few DU'ers who would be happy to transfer their kids to take your kid's spot.

Haele

[catmandu57]

17. Well I can tell you we don't have a mountain of over supply

or donated items here. Maybe out in the wealthy burbs, but, we're pretty much in the same boat as inner city shcools, not enough of anything to go around.
There are pockets of deep deep poverty here, I donated some supplies I bought to a local charity last month, and they were damn glad to get them.
They help outfit children every year, and their supply closet wasn't overflowing. They need much more than what I could give them.

[InkAddict]

21. Rules hold back progress

After a year of unemployment, our family moved to another city within the state. The new school district was affluent and had a higher expectation of scholastic achievement. When my daughter had problems "catching up," and I asked for extra elementary school worksheets for help at home, we were told that, since we moved in during the December break, my child was not counted in the October state "head-count" for funding, so no extra worksheets could be spared.

[GoldenOldie]

29. Stop the Lies??????

mjb4 should follow his own request.

I have spent the past 10 years volunteering to speak to students within one of the largest school districts in the country - grades 1 -12. As my speaking engagements were held within the individual classrooms, I had the opportunity to talk to teachers and closely observe the school and classroom setting. I also have a daughter who teaches High School and her hours can run from 7:30 am through 10:00 pm.

mjb4 you may speak of experience involving one school, but it is very apparent you know very little about the serious problems that the teachers and their students must endure on a daily basis. It is easy to blame those professionals that are on the very bottom of the money tree, much harder to attack those at the very top that actually hold the purse strings and the power to control what is happening within our educational system. -

[FlaGranny]

30. Unreasonable hatred of a whole

group of people - mjb4 must have some extreme personal issues? It's one of the most unreasonable and prejudiced posts I've ever seen here at DU.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Lisa]

37. My guess is, most people would be upset by a job that demanded ...

1) Mandatory unpaid overtime
(e.g. time spent before or after office hours, on lunchhours, or weekends -- supervising class trips, coaching sports, tutoring) ... yes, a lot of people who aren't teachers volunteer their time for these kinds of things, but the point of volunteering is that you have a choice. If the President suddenly ordered all Americans to register for mandatory volunteer time, I bet that even public-spirited types would think it was out of line.

2) Paying for needed supplies out of your own pocket
--it's not just the supplies, but the time spent looking for them, besides. I've paid for course materials myself (like in-class prizes for contests, chemicals for lab demonstrations, and "emergency" review handouts when the print shop was closed) -- but this was my choice. I have been seeing a lot of commercials which imply that it's a teacher's DUTY to look after all material needs ("Shop at *Mart, we have teaching stuff) -- but I've never seen any ads directing office workers to buy their own photocopiers, or construction workers to bring their own nails and lumber.

3) Having to take another job first, in order to give you financial security
--again, several financial planning firms have been showing ads with rich people taking early retirement (thanks to investment tips) so they can teach.
What kind of message does this send to young people? "Yes, we know that having an educated population makes for a safer, healthier, more prosperous society, but if you want to be a teacher, you'd better make sure you have rich parents or a prior career"?


A private sector job that had these constraints would be viewed with a lot of suspicion at best, or a con game at worst! The number of times I've heard my friends complaining about their corporate jobs: "Oh, they said it was $40k a year, but I had to pay for dental, and they wouldn't cover the move, and the cost of living is so much higher in that city ...

Funny how the jobs that politicians love paying lip service to -- teachers, health care workers, police, firefighters, librarians, soldiers -- these are the ones that are losing benefits and not getting much support. And they're all vital services that everybody uses. If there are high burnout rates and people leaving because they can't make enough to feed their families ... it's a problem!

*p.s. yes, I am in the education field -- at the college level. And I am amazed at how much the people in elementary and high school level have to do! My dad was a teacher, and sure as heck we weren't living high on the hog ... we never went on exotic vacations and had but the one car (I still don't have a vehicle). Sure, there are teachers out there who have committed crimes, or are lazy. All lines of work have people like that. But I'd be a fool if I accused every single cashier of short-changing me, or every food server of spitting in my soup.