Help the teachers helping our students
There’s a last time for every routine in a parent’s life: The last time you carry your child on your hip, the last time you read a bedtime story, the last time you throw a kiddie birthday party.
This week marks an important milestone for me: It’s the first August that I didn’t have to go buy back-toschool supplies for my sons. I’m loving it! My youngest is a senior in high school, and he simply plucked a couple of folders, a pen and a notebook out of the supply cabinet and trucked off to class.
No more searching for just the right backpack, no more pitches about how a new iPhone could be considered a “school supply” — I’m all done.
The National Retail Federation estimates that families will spend an average of $684.79 on backto-school shopping this year. And the number is even higher for Latinos — U.S. Hispanic parents are expected to spend $148 more, for a total of $833, on their back-toschool purchases.
All of this amounts to about $27.5 billion worth of everything from new clothes and shoes to graphing calculators, lunch boxes and a metric ton of glue sticks.
But don’t worry, the economy will not take a hit this year from my staying home from the tantalizing back-to-school sales — I’m a teacher. I still have to stock up on tissues, classroom decorations, dry-erase markers, pencils and bricks of sticky notes.
A stunning 94 percent of all teachers in traditional (non-charter) public schools spend their own money on classroom supplies, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). And elementary-school teachers are only slightly more likely than high-school teachers to shell out for their students’ benefit.
It’s not just peanuts, either: The NCES estimates that among teachers who used their own money on classroom supplies without reimbursement, the average amount spent during the 2014-15 school year was $479. Teachers in urban school districts paid a little more ($526), and rural teachers spent a little less ($442) — but it’s still quite a chunk of change.
My husband is also a teacher, and last school year, we spent way over the national average because I was working at an under-resourced school where more than 90 percent of the students come from low-income families. Not only did I buy materials like flashcards, books and board games for teaching purposes, but I also paid out-of-pocket for extra professional development. Plus I bought snacks for hungry learners and extra school supplies for the kids who never had pencils or erasers; one day I literally gave a student the clothes off my back because she needed them more than I did.
For teachers with needy students, the sob stories abound. Every once in a while, they even turn into happy stories that go viral.
A Good Samaritan in Pensacola, Florida, recently gave $40 to an English teacher checking out at Walmart with a cart full of school supplies for her students. He also thanked her for her commitment to her job.
Another teacher, from Chicago, received cash donations totaling $530 after her fellow passengers on a flight to Florida overheard her talking about how many of her first-graders come from such poor families that they often show up to school hungry, and many times they are homeless as well.
In July, Target stores gave teachers a 15 percent discount on school supplies. This underscores the fact that, with the exception of a few teachers who luck into the generosity of strangers — whether by being in the right place at the right time or by raising their own money on education crowdfunding platforms like DonorsChoose.org — most teachers just eat the costs of providing students with the best possible school experience.
How do they afford it, when we all know teachers across the country are underpaid relative to the amount of education they need to get certified to teach?
Well, during the 2015-16 school year, 18 percent of teachers held a job outside the school system, and another 20 percent taught summer school in order to make ends meet and have a little left over for their students.
The beginning of the school year means it’s Open House time. If you’ll be heading in to meet your children’s teachers, be a hero (if you can) and ask them if you can help them with supplies.
Better yet, just send in a few boxes of tissues or a bottle of hand sanitizer. It’ll only cost a few bucks, and I guarantee it’ll make your kid’s teachers feel very appreciated.