By Gary Dickson
My daughter, who lives in Colorado, is a high school teacher. Sometimes when we talk on the phone she likes to vent about some of the challenges of her job. She frequently says that many students just don”t care about school. There are dangers involved while on the job. A student was almost killed when her throat was slashed in a random attack in the main hallway of the school. My daughter was close by. There is the pay level. Teachers aren”t the highest paid professionals and the school district she works for has had a wage freeze in place for a couple of years. Since she is early in her career, she is frozen at the lowest level, while those who have been teaching longer are at least frozen at a considerably higher rate.
We all tend to grumble about our job situation from time-to-time, but after reading a national report about the 2009-2010 school year and how much money the average teacher spent out of his or her own pocket on classroom supplies and materials during that teaching period, I realized just how much of a right my daughter and every other teacher has to complain about their situation.
Last school year American teachers spent $1.3 billion out of their own pockets and bank accounts to furnish their classrooms with a wide assortment of supplies and teaching materials. The report indicated that the average per teacher outlay was $356. The amount has actually dwindled over the past few years; likely because of the economy and those wage freezes that have been in place. In the 2005-2006 school year the amount was $552 per teacher.
Now, I know there are plenty of jobs in which the holder may spend some out-of-pocket money for certain items. For example, I purchase the Tootsie Roll Midgees that we keep on the front counter for customers and employees. But, I don”t pay for the newsprint and ink used in the daily newspapers we produce. Those are the raw materials of our business and the company pays for all of it. Neither I nor the other employees would consider pulling money from their pockets to pay the paper mill or ink supplier.
The way I see it; items like printer paper, arts and crafts supplies, pencils, glue and other similar items are all part of the raw materials of education. They should all be supplied by the school district in ample quantity for each teacher to have what he or she needs to perform the job as outlined in the job description.
Parents are the more logical source of money for student supplies. Actually, parents are being asked to pitch in ever more frequently since the beginning of the recession. In many school districts, though, parents have been complaining about the extended supply lists they have been asked to purchase and have their child(ren) deliver to school, due to district budget cuts. The additional expenditures are new and distasteful to them, but many teachers have been subsidizing their classroom supplies and materials for years.
Obviously, there are many more parents than there are teachers. If each family were assessed just a few more dollars in fees, the $356 that the average teacher has to spend could be left in the bank for them to spend on their own needs or the needs of their family, instead of them having to spend their hard-earned money to help educate the children of people they don”t even know.
Gary Dickson is the publisher of the Record-Bee. Call him at 263-5636, ext. 24. E-mail him at gdickson@record-bee.com.
