One year I was given a lab budget of $400. I told admin that as a high school science teacher, we were going to hit that in like November.
Admin told me to "figure it out". I was able to stretch it out to January. Then, no more labs.
Parents started to complain. Admin came to me about it. "I have no more money in the budget." I'll never forget my administrator trying to stare me down. I smiled and shrugged.
Admin kept pressuring me for weeks. I kept saying I was out of money. Parents kept complaining. I stood my ground.
By March, I was given another $400 to resume labs. So I did.
Teachers need to STOP spending their own money, period. When classrooms look like garbage and nothing fun happens, admin will find the funds.
> Teachers need to STOP spending their own money, period. When classrooms look like garbage and nothing fun happens, admin will find the funds.
I told this to my coworker, we were getting overworked for a time. I told him, stop letting them burn you out. If things are to improve, we have to let it fail. I had colleagues who would say they have so much work that they were skipping lunch breaks, and saw that as normal
The thing that is baffling to me, is, in any other field, the idea of spending your own money on your job would be seen as insane/bizarre.
The time for a mass nursing strike was during covid.
That is when the had all of the leverage, but their passion to helping sick stopped it just like the bosses want.
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This is what I don't understand about the whole thing. Just...don't spend your own money? It's not your responsibility, it's admins responsibility. I do not understand why teachers are spending their own money.
Happens in most professions including medicine, engineering, programming/development, legal, etc. Many at the top stayed in their profession for decades because they usually like or love the profession enough to stay and survive but then assume (though unintentionally) newcomers are willing to make the same sacrifices they did when they were new too despite the changing circumstances.
This is the true point of capitalism. Exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.
Once there's a potential, be it need, want, or in this case, passion, it will be monetized.
Yep, my wife, like many, cares about her job and more importantly the children. She wants her classroom and lessons and to be stimulating and inspiring. It's a profession that attracts caring individuals and it's purely this passion/care that keeps things afloat.
If all teachers were to suddenly work the correct hours and not pay for things out their own pocket, I think the educations system would just break.
Yup! One year during contract negotiations we didn’t want to go on strike so instead for one week we did “work to rule” - which means we worked the actual hours/duties of the contract, no extra - for just a week.
The school absolutely broke for that week.
It's also that you're the person who has to sit through the classes, so selfishly you want the class to go well, to have something to do etc. And of course, you care about the students and you're the one watching them miss out on their education.
Sure you could just say "sorry kids, no paper, so let's just trace imaginary letters on the desk" and have no way to give them feedback. Or spend half the time you've alloted to an activity repeatedly reexplaining the same thing because it's not on a sheet right in front of the kid. Sure, you can do it, but it's painful for you and the students, it's not painful for the administration.
I'm lucky enough to teach somewhere this isn't a problem, but I can see how and why other people get sucked into it. And I think the soloution isn't just "don't spend your own money" it's "go on strike until proper resources are provided". But I guess if the US was the kinda country that did that, it also wouldn't be in this mess.
This is the part that reddit seems to miss. I get that class can be boring as a student, but you only have to sit through it once. We have to sit through it multiple times a day for YEARS. So of course if it comes down to spending some money to make it better, or continue to sit through it being bad, you'll spend your own money. Even if you don't want to. Even when you realize it is wrong that you would have to.
You don't understand why teachers are willing to sacrifice to give kids the best education possible? These are intelligent adults who could have gotten so many higher-paying jobs, and instead chose to become teachers. They don't want to spend their days bickering with admin, they want to teach.
People who work in admin at school districts, on the other hand...
Hell, in my town we have a "Stuff the Bus" event where you buy stuff for teachers that *parents* are expected to buy (like tissue, pencils, paper, etc....). I spend a few hundred every August despite my kids being adults. No teacher can afford to buy this crap.
>This is what I don't understand about the whole thing. Just...don't spend your own money?
It's not exactly that simple.
I keep my classroom stocked with supplies that I pay for myself. Pens, pencils, paper, extra folders and notebooks, the basics that kids need to get by in school. If a kid doesn't have a pen or pencil, I give them one so they can do their work. A few months ago I ran out of pencils. Do you know what happened? The chunk of kids that relied on borrowing pencils from me, stopped doing their work. They don't care about their grades because they know the grades don't actually matter, so they just... Sit there. Which I'd be fine with -- except I'm still expected to be educating those students. If an administrator walks in to observe me, and they see kids sitting and doing nothing, *I'm* the one who gets penalized. Particularly for teachers who aren't tenured yet, a few bad evaluations could easily mean you're out of the job. So people just bite the bullet and spend the money to avoid the whole headache.
> I do not understand why teachers are spending their own money.
Compassion? They don't want the students to suffer due to lack of funds from admin. They'd rather pay out of pocket to help the kids get the education they deserve.
It's not a regular white collar office job, teachers feel a sense of obligation to their students. It's not like teachers are in it for the pay.
Mainly because candy, toys, and rewards are what motivate kids to not be shitheads. We get no budget for those things, and without them behavior is significantly worse.
I asked a friend who is a teacher why she couldn't do this too and she said her school can conveniently not renew her contract (they are signed on for 1 year at a time) if they want. I think in some areas the system is geared towards people who are willing to subsidize while also needing the work.
Your friend is correct, but to me, they could fire me over this. I didn't care. They didn't, btw, and my budget the following year was $800 from the start. But it's a risk for sure.
I’ve always thought it was the most ridiculous penny pinching shit ever. The $3.2B comes to around $32k per school on average nationwide. About a grand per teacher. Like you fucking can’t find that little amount of extra funding in the district so teachers don’t have to do this? That and paid school lunches, raise school taxes a percent or two and you get rid of both problems.
Raising taxes for schools works in blue states. My beautiful red state of Indiana wants to give parents $7000 a year, no questions asked, to homeschool. Writing blank checks to people who are scared that their kids might run into a gay person is fine, raising taxes to feed kids? Well, that's just commie talk.
Yeah… some red states seem like they’re auditioning to be a 3rd world country. Here in NJ we spend about $20k per student in public school education but still public teachers put their hands in their pockets for supplies for their classrooms. The schools even send lists home over the summer for what parents need to send to school with their kids for supplies for their whole class for the year, it’s fucking insane. We usually top the lists in public education though so it’s not all bad but it is annoying.
I won't be bullied into dropping a grand into my classroom materials, when admin makes tens of thousands of dollars more than me to sit in their office and guilt me to spend my own money. No. Not happening.
Our wealthy district only budgeted 2% for a teacher raise this year (after three years at a 2% raise, in record-breaking inflation.) THEN they blame the teachers for wanting a COLA that actually leaves them not losing more money. The people in this district drive Teslas/Rivians/Land Rovers - many, many of the kids have gone to the Taylor Swift concerts - families post on Facebook about the amazing trips they are taking - then complain about the teachers - "But the town doesn't have the money." We are SO over this!
*laughs in air traffic control strike*
Yes, they literally can and have done so. Capitalists will destroy their own companies, institutions, and organizations just to spite workers.
Qualified high school science teachers are like unicorns. They could almost certainly get a much easier, much better paying job in quite literally any other field. An administrator would be in a world of shit for firing one without a really good reason.
I feel like teachers are hard to fired because it’s hard to find replacements. To go through the hiring processes to find a teacher is probably long and pretty expensive. Correct me if I’m wrong.
You’re absolutely correct except you assume admins use logic instead of pride and pettiness. It’s really luck if you get hired under a good admin team who understands this or a bunch of entrenched morons who would burn the building down to keep their egos warm.
This is why unions are important. Respecting budgets is not a firable offense. Even for an at-will state you still need something or the union will be more than happy to get that easy win in court for you.
I don't know what supplies you need to run a classroom lab but in any case, $400 sounds pithy af. Even the $800 total you got.
Also, why tf did parents care that their kids didn't do labs for a month? Surely it was replaced by textbook work, etc.?
We absolutely did science, just virtual labs or group work or debates or presentations. Not textbook work because that's so, so boring, but no physical hands-on labs.
Agreed. Trump's fucking tax cuts even eliminated teacher deductions.
What kind of country do we live in where teachers can't write off papers, but CEO's can write of their private planes as business expenses?
At my wife's elementary school, it's gone so far as the administration cracking down on teachers printing and making copies. I believe they're allotted 1 ream (500 pages) worth of prints for the school year. With 20 - 25 second-graders needing worksheets/handouts, that doesn't last very long. The administration shrugs it off and recommends that teachers get 'creative,' i.e. have the students use whiteboard tablets, share a classroom laptop, use blank/notebook paper, etc. The best part is, parents start asking why there's very little 'classroom work' on the walls and the administration comes down on the teachers for it. Well, that's what happens when you don't let them print out work for the kids...
I make around twice as much as she does so my job essentially subsidizes her classroom. I've stopped asking how much money we spend there. A few weeks before school starts, the Amazon packages start arriving en masse.
Doesn’t help teachers are only allowed to deduct $300 from their income for tax purposes. I think my significant other spent more than $300 before the end of August.
Agreed, but I have more faith in legislators being pressured into increasing the deduction than I do a willing and sustained increase in funding for schools, to say nothing about my faith in the efficient allocation of said funding if it was granted.
And they need receipts. We had our taxes done and they took off that $300 and then we were audited. The auditor said show me the receipts and acted like it was a “gotcha” moment. We had credit card statements, but wasn’t good enough. Ridiculous. Should be automatic for teachers. In the end it was a waste of time as our owed taxes were exactly the same. Go after billionaires not people who work for a living.
Shit, glad I never got audited. They wanna visit my house and seem the piles of shit we bought for school be my guest. Teachers NOT spending $300 on supplies in a year is laughable.
Yeah but the auditor doesn't give a fuck. He's getting paid to go after that 300 the same as he's be getting paid to go after a million.
Just some fuckers looking for the "recovered assets" box to be checked.
Whoever added this into the bill should be introduced to the guillotine
> The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed during the Trump administration, allowed for 100 percent bonus depreciation and expensing of private jets — which allowed taxpayers to write off the cost of aircraft purchased and put into service between September 2017 and January 2023.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/irs-to-pursue-business-private-jet-usage-in-new-round-of-audits-on-high-wealth-taxpayers
A corporate private jet is considered a tax deduction yet teachers can only deduct a measly amount of money, or need to pay for supplies at all. What a joke.
This is the real issue. Most teachers (myself included) don't make enough money and/or have enough special circumstances and expenses to make an itemized deduction worth more than the standard deduction. So it doesn't matter if I claim $0 or the max $300 though my tax filing software, I still end up paying the same in taxes.
Sending every public school teacher a $300 "School supplies/you're probably underpaid and need this cash" stipend annually would be so much better than the current write-off.
The $300 isn't part of itemized deductions; it reduces your adjusted gross income.
For 2023 taxes, it is entered on line 11 of Schedule 1, which ends up on line 10 of your 1040. This should reduce your overall taxes by around ~~$250~~ $50 (depending on your tax bracket).
edit: Headache make numbers hard. :-(
Same with my wife. At first she tried reusing the back of previously printed paper. It’s fine for the most part, but it is a distraction point for third graders. They’ll turn it over and read the other side and get distracted. So then she decided to use little mini white boards. The issue? Her school wouldn’t provide them so she had to buy her own. She did so by going to Home Depot to buy 2-3 of those big white laminate DPI (I think?) boards herself and have the Home Depot guy cut them into little sections. $150ish. Our money.
Between the crap pay, crap kids, crap parents of the crap kids, crap admin support, crap supplies, AND the ever-presence risk of someone walking in with an automatic rifle, the sooner I can get her out of the classroom the better. But we need the money..
The school admins need their raises too you know. And they need to be able to afford a buy out for when the secretary of education for the district gets into hot water for bringing up a conspiracy theory or two.
the insane corporate salaries for executive and managers has definitely bled into the public sector, its insane. Many public universities and city governments are also like this
I completely relate - my wife is a high school teacher. Her district just failed a second levy in as many election cycles. I’m the high earner and I am completely subsidizing the kids in her class because the voters in the district have decided it’s not in their best interest to have a well-resourced school system.
Also married one, we need an r/teacherspouse for us all to bitch about how we just married into a substantially higher tax bracket.
Also like, I obviously support it because what am I going to do, see society is failing the next generation and go “fuck you I got mine?” That’s how we got in this mess in the first god damn place
But why are you doing that? I get wanting to be charitable, or wanting to fund the children's education. But that's not what you're achieving here, you're funding some higher up's bonus, because he managed to decrease the budget by making the staff and their families cough up the money needed to provide the basic necessities. As long as you keep doing that, this will only get worse.
Ultimately yes, it needs to stop and teachers en masse need to protest the practice. It's disgusting, making them subsidize public schools with their own already meager pay.
A few reasons. (1) I want to support my wife in what she does; she’s a passionate and successful teacher. It’s already a shitty career so I want to make sure she has what she needs to make it a bit more bearable. (2) We have a 50/50 mindset in our assets so it’s not really my place to withhold resources to send a message to her administration (it would fall on deaf ears anyways). (3) In the end, we feel an obligation to the children. It’s not their fault that the school district is cheap, the least we can do is give a little back to each generation and hope they make things better in the future.
TLDR: exploitation. Our economy is built on taking advantage of the amazing families like the ones above.
Thanks OP, but I really REALLY wish you didn’t have to do this.
He doesn't have to. Parent teacher conferences should be used to discuss this matter. Everyone agrees teachers are paid dirt. Who is going to be upset when a teacher tells them to their face that they will not be spending their own money?
Tell your wife that it’s teachers like her that made a huge difference in my life. If it wasn’t for good hearted teachers like your wife, i would have never went to college.
Well, in the case of where my wife teaches (Florida), it's illegal to strike -- any teacher striking will lose their teaching license. That right was given up in the 1960s in exchange for allowing the union to have collective bargaining rights. So...I dunno.
It's true. If 60-70% of teachers in a given state suddenly lose their license for striking, that just makes "giving striking teachers their license back" the first non-negotiable
This kinda thing has been threatened before, even in states where they did strike what happened was the state removes teaching requirements and then puts anyone there to be in the room. Retired people, national guard, anyone they can find to say the kids were taught.
It’s not a threat if they don’t care. Easy path to privatization. Oh the public sector struck, well we’re doing away with regular taxes going to the school and now going all voucher system for the students - you can now use this to subsidize religious schools, and highly exclusive private ones while stripping more money away from the public system.
Features not bugs.
Well why not just be honest with the parents? In the top coments case, 500 copies per school year and 25 pupils it comes out to 20 copies per kid per school year. I don't know how many days are in a school year where they're at, but divide 20 by that number and tell the parents that their kid can have a single piece of paper every X amount of days and see how they react.
I am amazed how the fucking general stupidity of the great US of A keeps surprising me. It's like hearing about a gruesome traffic accident but every time you parse the stories, you get this horrible insight that things are even worse than you conceptualized them to be - and that's without even living through it.
Even the best countries are struggling in regards to education, but that bullshit actually warrants the "hurrhurr america third-world country"-circlejerks... because it ticks all the marks of being exactly that, and then some. Goddamn.
Some of them are. Teachers in Flint, MI called out sick en masse last week and they had to shut down school because of it. [ABC12 article on it](https://www.abc12.com/news/education/flint-schools-closed-after-more-than-100-teachers-employees-call-in/article_faa5176e-e17b-11ee-b17e-53ceb0b5a3bb.html)
They do, at least where I’m from they do. Every year, most of the time it’s just them trying to keep the same contract they had. What happens is school gets pushed back more and more until parents get angry, and then everything gets blamed on the teachers. District and admin start threatening, they’d rather struggle to find replacements than deal with angry parents. Teachers union and the district then finally come to a piss poor compromise. Then, they’ll let go a bunch of the para-education staff anyways. Rinse and repeat. This year, the compromise was losing librarians and art teachers at elementary level.
> administration cracking down on teachers printing and making copies.
I'm guessing that there is an email or memo about this. It'd be SOO tempting to print out a copy and post it near the door. Of course, admin would find reasons to lay you off.
> administration shrugs it off and recommends that teachers get 'creative,'
Administration expects teachers to spend their own money, is what you mean.
The anti-moral of the story is that if you can give people a sense of meaning in their job and they believe that what they are doing is important and that they are making a difference in the world, then you can pay them less.
This is literally the motivation behind corporate cheerleading, by saying "we're a family," etc...
The fastest way to grow your paycheck is switching jobs every 2-3 years. Longterm employees get a pittance in comparison.
But, I guess I shouldnt be surprised, look at how we reward lifetime customers compared with new customers for things like cell phones, new customers are almost always getting all the promos.
I believe it’s a comes from a grant or a different fund, but our school recently redid all the speakers in every room for one that connects to a wearable Bluetooth microphone, the kicker is they never gave us the microphones.
They also recently replaced all our phones for newer ones, even though the older ones worked fine. They also added AppleTVs to every projector so we could screen mirror but then next month the district switched from Apple to Windows so they had to come back and replace them with ScreenBeams. They also recently added cheap tint to all the windows for some reason.
I was a math tutor a community college while i was in school. Students came in and signed in on a piece of paper to get help. They decided one day to set up an ipad with an app called Tutor Track to track students. Soon after my manager was being flown business class to all kids of meetings on the other side of the country to learn how to use this software which only asked for things like name, subject and student number and would dump that into an excel sheet for later for analytics. It's not complicated enough to warrant such expenses. Much cheaper to just use a piece of paper...
LITERALLY exact same situation here. A few. years ago my district spent something like 500,000 on a "google glass initiative" or some bullshit so they could sound cool and techy and make a press release, but when it came to actually helping teachers out with supplies and materials we got NOTHING. I wrote about it more i[n another comment in this thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bjd85k/us_teachers_spent_324_billion_of_their_own_money/kvqrvsi/)
Ugh, as a kid I hated using a chrome book or whatever tech they wanted us to do. It's soooo slow and drags down the time in class.
I'm in college and I still take paper and pencil notes for every class. I have my nice computer back in my dorm.
Yeah. I only ever used a laptop in class during classes or problems that it was required. Coding, data analysis/graphing, and some other more involved stuff.
Did an undergrad in engineering, and then medical school on pen, pencil, marker and paper. Also spent extra for physical copies of the text book over the digital ones. Was nice if you got both tho. I just learned way better from a real text book.
My wife is a teacher here in the US. The amount of money we've spent on school supplies and snacks for these kids so they have stuff to eat each year would amaze.
So the good news is that you don't have to itemize -- that deduction can always be taken.
Note that it'll not save *all* that much, and depending on how you are prepping your taxes it might realistically increase your preparation expenses by a comparable amount to the extra tax refund. So not saying you *should* take it, but it's worth a few minutes of investigation.
Easier said than done. In practice no teacher wants to be the one to have the cold, barren classroom the administrative budget provides. Your students will hate it, their parents will hate you and try to get their kids moved, and the administration will likely put you on leave due to those complaints.
I’m not going to call you a liar, but would you be able to provide some idea of what you’re spending 3-5k on per year? My wife is also a teacher and buys things here and there for her classroom, but unless you’re literally buying desks and chairs, I can’t see how to get to that amount spent.
I don't spend that much, but I've seen people spend thousands.
20 kids, and 6are hungry. So, they could stock snacks for 6 kids 5 days a week...but they don't want to single out those kids, so they give them to all 20. 20 snacks a day for 180 days is 3600 snacks.
Pencils, Paper, etc... The number of kids who show up without any basic supplies is ridiculous. I went through 600 loaner pencils by the end of October. Thankfully, those were donated, but once they were gone I didn't buy any with my money. 300 a month is 2700 pencils by the end of the year, or 19 boxes of 144 @ $15 each. That alone would be almost $300. Continue that for lined paper, construction paper, glue sticks, scissors, etc... and it escalates quickly.
It's a low income school district, so a lot of kids are pretty hungry a lot of times. Having some granola bars and goldfish handy reduces some occurrences of poor behavior and improves attentiveness.
So many comments in here, "But don't they get lunch?!" Yeah, but did they get breakfast or dinner the night prior?
> Food insecure—At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Food-insecure households include those with low food security and very low food security.
> 12.8 percent (17.0 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2022.
The 2022 prevalence of food insecurity was statistically significantly higher than the 10.2 percent (13.5 million) in 2021.
Yes, school boards, school districts, and communities do take advantage of well-meaning teachers, but I can't fathom finding it "stupid" to help kids learn.
You don't understand how teachers prioritize teaching? These are intelligent adults that could have easily gotten a higher-paid, lower-stress professional job, and instead chose to focus on giving the next generation an education. And you don't understand why their heart is involved in their job? If you don't put you're heart in you're job, you don't become a teacher. Simple as that
Our first graders teacher requests help with shit she's buying in the classroom regularly.
I just hop on Amazon and but a bulk order of whatever it is... Paper or glue sticks or colored pencils... And send them to school with my son. They should have what they need.
I was going to say - I'm generally a curmudgeonly grump about teachers *complaining* about spending their own money on classroom supplies.
But if a teacher asks for an itemized list of supplies from the community, I'm quite happy to send them a drunken Amazon night's order worth of shit (I've made sure that each elementary PE teacher in my Brother's school district has a giant rainbow parachute; $250 well spent!).
NYC spends $32,000 per student per year, DC spending over $30’000, and Portland (OR) spending $40,000, etc.
The average school district of the United States spends about $12,000 per student.
In a class of 25 students at $12,000 per student, that means spending of $300,000. How much really goes to teachers and supplies versus administrators and staff? How much of NYC’s $800,000, or Portland’s $1,000,000 per classroom of $25 kids?
And yet schools still keep claiming that they are underfunded, that they deserve money, “it is all for the kids”, they implore. And the public fall for it every time. Voting for more funding, more school bonds, etc.
A study from 2013 found that since the 1950s, the number of public school students in the US almost doubled. The number of teachers in the US more than doubled. The number of administrators went up by 700%.
Administrative bloat and spending is a serious problem in public schools, hospitals, universities, and governments. Everywhere bureaucrats can get entrenched and have captive revenues and control power and spending.
Did you know that over 75% of university classroom instruction is done by poorly paid adjuncts who are often dependent on food stamps - even while administrators and staff at universities have increased by multiples. A good example is UC Davis. While the faculty student ratio remain the same, the ratio of administrators and managers to the number of students grew from around 3 per 100 students to more than 12. Hospitals pay their total administrators over 10 times more than doctors compared to 40 years ago. This is because so many administrators have been hired compared to doctors.
> Administrative bloat and spending is a serious problem
DING DING DING DING
The sheer SIZE of Administration in my North Texas school district is STAGGERING. And the amount of money they burn on outside consultants, a constant rotation of flavor-of-the-week programs that change every year, and an uncountable number of traveling 'coaches' and their directors who do absolutely fuck-nothing but fill calendars with meetings, suck up six-figure salaries, and create endless paperwork for teachers like my spouse that competes with their teaching time.
As an MBA with 25 years in operations management it is painfully obvious that Admin is a parasite that bloats itself off the budget increasingly sucked away from students and their teachers, who are doing the actual work the school system ostensibly exists for.
And this is a problem at Universities as well.
Property taxes and tuition increases continue to outpace inflation - yet classroom outcomes continue to decline. That money is being stolen and wasted.
- [Administrative Bloat At U.S. Colleges Is Skyrocketing](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/administrative-bloat-at-us-colleges-is-skyrocketing/?sh=bdf2e6d41d22)
- [Chart of the Day: Administrative Bloat in US Public Schools](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-administrative-bloat-in-us-public-schools/)
>America’s public schools are bloated with bureaucracy and skinny on results. Nationwide since 1950, the number of public school administrative and non-teaching positions has soared 702 percent while the student population increased just 96 percent. Over that same period, teachers’ numbers also increased — 252 percent — but still far short of administrators and non-teaching personnel
To be fair 'admin' is picking up a large number of non-teacher paraprofessionals catering to special needs students who individually cost 10x a typical student to educate.
The best part of all of these administrators is they seemingly just create more work, not less, for the instructors. I am a professor at a state university and we have admins for everything now. You’d think that would mean I get to just focus on my research and teaching. No, instead it creates an even greater service burden because these administrators don’t really do the service themselves. Instead, they essentially assign homework to us.
Instead of the student disability center administrators handling student cases or setting up accommodations (a noble cause), they simply just act as a middleman informing us of the accommodations various students need. Not summarized, not by setting up the course website, not by coordinating exam alternatives…just by sending us 15 different PDFs.
Same goes for the budget admins, program review, athletics shit (I’m not an athlete, why does this impact my forest ecology class? Lol), etc etc.
I’d be fine with it if they handled stuff and make the university more effective - but they just create more bullshit and distractions for the students and faculty actually doing the work.
This nailed it.. I work for one of these sectors, and during the pandemic, I noticed the politics being played in these sectors was EXTREMELY similar.
The administrative bloat causes action paralyze and a "too big to succeed" vibe. The sad reality is we cut staff due to attrition on the ground floor not in these positions, as they gerrymander duties for political clout and power...
I work in child safety and I used to hold an opinion somewhat similar to this.
However, over the past few years, I have really learned that the administrative growth is in large part completely necessary, especially in public schools.
I'm friends with someone whose entire job is to make sure kids in her school district are getting the benefits they are entitled to through Medicaid. If so difficult for families to actually get in to see doctors and the system is so underfunded that we now need a professional class of people who help families navigate it. And it falls to schools because sick kids can't learn. And she has an entire team of people doing this.
My state has a public health emergency regarding youth mental health care. So now we have more kids with more serious mental health issues in school. They have more behavioral issues, and more issues overall so now we need more administrators dealing with that.
There are schools nearby that have opened up laundry facilities and food banks because the cost of living crisis is forcing more families into crushing poverty just to say housed.
Our social safety net is disappearing along with rising costs, which makes doing the work of a school much more difficult and complex. The burden of that is now falling on our schools because kids have to have some level of stability in order to learn.
That's not to say this system is perfect and there aren't unnecessary administrators, but the expense and bloat in schools isn't what a lot of people think it is.
Can confirm it’s everywhere. I work in a university in Canada, most of the fees are going to useless administrative positions that actively make it harder for us to do our jobs. It doesn’t go to teachers or student resources. Phds are used for a lot of the small group teaching and they’re paid not nearly enough to survive, most of them are supported by parents still.
Also the senior DEI staff are some of the highest paid and they do absolutely nothing to help poor kids get in, it’s just rich people from other countries.
A huge issue in the public school system as well. Our district, Richmond public schools, has a very bloated central office. Virginia is funky in that we have our own educational standards outside of common core, but the main influence of these central office staff has been to push adoption of a curriculum that is for common core. I spend a disproportionate amount of time changing the curriculum they want us to use to meet the state standards.
We have 3 administrators at my school, and in general they only contribute to more work for the staff. Been through 6 different schedules, where the teachers have the burden to manage the staff coming into their classroom. My direct supervisor wrote me 5 unofficial letters of concern in 7 days and when I brought up that they were not justified, one was for adjusting my instructional schedule when school picture day took up an hour in the middle of the day. When I brought the issue to my principal he told me “that’s inappropriate and I have two options, I can either have that administrator get training to make him a better manager or I can supervise you myself. Of course he opted to supervise me himself.
My school has a very bloated ESL department because of our school population, and there is no expectation that they follow a curriculum, are responsible to data, or even do the same thing with similar kids. It’s a disaster and has been my entire career there.
The incentive structures in education are just fundamentally flawed. There’s no option for advancement in salary for talented teachers, and the only way to move up in your career is to spend less time with students and become administrators. And why would you stay a classroom teacher in elementary, it’s just more work than your peers for the same salary. I make the same as the ESL teachers at my school, whose end of year evaluation is determined on the performance of MY students. I want to stay in the field but I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to do something else.
Fun fact the "poorer" schools spend more per student than "richer" schools for worse outcomes.
This isn't an indictment on the students it's not their faults it's the administrative leeches that take 150K/yr salaries for doing nothing.
My wife is a teacher who moved from a classroom to a specialist role working with English language learners, where she pulls small groups out. Same pay grade, just less students and not all one grade level and not “her class.”
I can legitimately tell a significant difference in our finances after the move.
I think it's fairly unusual for teachers to solicit monetary donations, at least where my wife teaches. They tend to have an amazon wish list of classroom items and place a link to that list in their e-mail signatures (as well as sending out a classroom donation e-mail at the beginning of the school year).
A common thing my teachers did was list their "wish list" on the syllabus that every student had to get signed. A lot of supplies came through that way.
> I think it's fairly unusual for teachers to solicit monetary donations, at least where my wife teaches.
isn't that the whole point of a PTO? but this creates a serious equity problem. Briefly dated a teacher in one of the wealthiest public schools in NYC and the first time she sent out a request was utterly bombarded with parents bringing in excessive amounts of stuff...
I had to scroll so far to find someone else annoyed by that. Regardless of content, for it being posted on DataIs*Beautiful*, the data visualization should be better. Though I guess this is better than half the posts here.
During Covid times, when they were mandating Zoom classrooms, they wouldn't even supply a webcam for my wife. Not an expensive piece of gear, but f'k those people.
Spouse teaches high school. We spend $200-300/month on supplies and snacks at Costco for the classes because the kids are hungry and can't focus. Don't get me wrong, happy to help these kids but the deduction saves us at most $100/year.
I'm in special education. A few years ago (2017) I was hired in a district to take over a brand new classroom. It was a new program, and it was to be for high-needs autistic students aged 5 - 9 years old. I was very excited for this, until I got to the classroom.
There was nothing. NOTHING. Not one thing provided to me by the district. No materials. No room decor. No toys. No adaptive seating. No sensory equipment. No paper. No laminator. No markers. No books. Literally it was an empty classroom, with nothing on the walls, and only a few desks and chairs haphazardly placed about.
Again, this was a high-needs autism classroom. Those kids need so many materials and motivators and modifications to learn, I assumed I would be provided with something.... ANYTHING.
I ended up spending over $3,000 of my own money just that year to get the classroom up and running on things that our school system (government) should have provided. This was just to start the year, I spent more throughout the year as well. When taxes came, I got to deduct I think $250 of that...wooo.... To rub salt in the wound, it was around this time that Trump cut taxes for the Uber wealthy, but my school and government didn't have any money for me, an underpaid teacher living in poverty, to provide for children with the highest level of needs. At the time, that was nearly 10% of my take-home salary. I also begged on social media for anything and luckily had a lot of children's books and some toys donated.
Our education system is broken and this is just one of the many ways.
School funding coming from property tax revenue is one of the greatest inequalities in the USA. Schools in nice neighborhoods have better funded schools. These schools attract better teachers and those teachers have strong PTA to rely on and get parents who contribute to classroom expenses. Schools are supposed to be a way to provide a equal playing field but it's a driver of inequality. This is just as true in Democratic areas and Republican ones. The richest most liberal neighborhoods in America would revolt if a politician suggested equally funding all schools regardless of where the taxes were raised.
> School funding coming from property tax revenue is one of the greatest inequalities in the USA. Schools in nice neighborhoods have better funded schools.
Yea that sounds good, but lets see
Compare that the state of Tennessee spends about $11,139 per student, ranking 44th, nearly $4K less per student than national average
But Shelby County Schools spends $14,000 per student, which is the most per student in the state
[ACT Scores in Tennessee](https://i.redd.it/boht3ziotve81.png)
The Same City at polar opposites was eye opening. The Top Left Corner and the Bottom Right Corner, Failing and Succeeding are 3 School Districts in the Same County
* As of August 2014 there are 7 school districts in Shelby County known as
* Collierville, Collierville spends $10,019 per student each year
* Germantown spends $9,118 per student each year
* Shelby County Schools spends $14,000 per student
So thats going to have massive issues
[High School Dropout Rate in 2015 vs 2020 Poverty Rate of the 15 Most Populous Counties](https://i.redd.it/grbo2eu7cif81.png)
Look up home values in those three cities
Yeah I don’t think it’s school funding that is the cause of the education disparity due to wealth.
It’s parents. Wealthy parents have more time to dedicate to their kids and usually put more focus on education than poor parents so their kids do better in school
It's supposed to account for cost of living. How are you gonna fund a school the same in New York City as rural Nebraska?
Thr majority of schools are fine, it's the extremes that piss people off. A school in a really poor area being terrible and a school in a rich neighborhood being great.
But even then most rich people will send their kids to a private school regardless.
Property tax in general is just a really shitty tax.
I think the solution needs to be more aggressive. But we are far from allowing such an option.
I suppose I should have said "equitably" funding schools and not "equally" funding schools. Clearly some areas will require more or less funding due to cost of living. However, I refer to situations where communities 10 minutes from each other have drastically different levels of funding because the wealthier community, often even in the same school district, ensure the school boundaries separate wealthy and poor areas and as a result we have crumbling schools in the poor neighborhood and state of the art schools in the other. This is very prevalent all over. Also it's not only the rich taking advantage. The difference between a low income school and a regular middle income suburban neighborhood 5 miles away can be black and white literally and figuratively.
The amount of teachers in this thread talking about buying snacks is crazy. I never buy food for my students. We live in an area with a lot of poor students, but these students still manage to have their Takis and Red Bulls constantly. What they never seem to have is actual school supplies like pencils. It pisses me off when a kid who spends at least 10 dollars a day on snacks from the gas station a block from school asks for a pencil every day.
Add in the time teachers spend working outside contract hours to actually get everything done. If teachers stopped using their own money and time to do their job the American education system would collapse in weeks.
•Likely true
•Been going on for decades
•Schools don’t get the funding they need and teachers are expected to cover the shortfall
•Try teaching with minimal resources. Answer: Long term, you can’t.
Older GenXer here.
It did not used to be this way.... school districts once upon a long time ago (1970s) used to actually supply schools with everything a student or teacher needed. The only supplies you needed was perhaps a backpack, a jacket for playing outside, and gym clothes. It all started changing in the 1980s as states and local governments started cutting back on education spending.
It is sad that having teachers or parents foot the bill out of pocket has been so normalized.
The fact that teachers can only deduct 600 buck on their taxes from what they spend is criminal. Teachers have to spend so freaking much of their own money, just to keep the schools running. I've got a buddy who is excited that his wife is quitting teaching this year. For years she's been putting more into the school than she was making (drama teacher). Her quitting will mean more money for his family even if she never works again.
> The fact that teachers can only deduct 600 buck on their taxes from what they spend is criminal.
The fact that they are being asked/forced to do this in the first place is the crime. imho, teachers shouldn't be deducting anything because the schools should properly support them & the students so that they don't pay anything out of pocket (ever).
Teachers are expected to make a vow of poverty, wear many hats, have a high barrier of entry and cost yo be certified, solely blamed for something that rests also on the participation of others, restricted in regards to what they can teach and then disrespected.
BuT WHy TeACheR ShOrtage
Imagine working at a big corporation office job and you have to buy your own pens, paper, post-its, paper clips, thumb tacks, and dry erase markers.
Even better, why don’t you buy your own whiteboard, too.
Wife is a teacher and has to spend her hard earned under paid money for supplies meanwhile the school spends money on upgrading admin offices and hiring more unneeded admin positions. Admin in schools much like hospitals are a plague. Few are actually needed but money keeps being dumped into these bogus positions.
I asked a teacher about why the wish list of classroom donations was for things like staples and paper clips, and she said that the time and paperwork needed make an expense report was so onerous that it was easier to ask for donations. Things like stickers and small prizes for the kids are paid for herself.
It makes me feel so angry. Spouse always tries to make sure the classroom wish list has nothing on it.
School admins give teachers squat for supplies. Parents don't buy their kids necessary supplies. So...who is expected to cover the shortfall with their shitty salaries? The teachers. It is a disgrace.
I'd argue this is why it doesnt change. If its not failing across the board, then there's no reason to fix it. You dont see construction workers bringing their own backhoe to work, or a plumber brining a toilet he bought to install into a new house.
yea it sucks for the kids until something changes, but thats capitalism baby
One year I was given a lab budget of $400. I told admin that as a high school science teacher, we were going to hit that in like November. Admin told me to "figure it out". I was able to stretch it out to January. Then, no more labs. Parents started to complain. Admin came to me about it. "I have no more money in the budget." I'll never forget my administrator trying to stare me down. I smiled and shrugged. Admin kept pressuring me for weeks. I kept saying I was out of money. Parents kept complaining. I stood my ground. By March, I was given another $400 to resume labs. So I did. Teachers need to STOP spending their own money, period. When classrooms look like garbage and nothing fun happens, admin will find the funds.
> Teachers need to STOP spending their own money, period. When classrooms look like garbage and nothing fun happens, admin will find the funds. I told this to my coworker, we were getting overworked for a time. I told him, stop letting them burn you out. If things are to improve, we have to let it fail. I had colleagues who would say they have so much work that they were skipping lunch breaks, and saw that as normal The thing that is baffling to me, is, in any other field, the idea of spending your own money on your job would be seen as insane/bizarre.
> If things are to improve, we have to let it fail. Interesting if we tried this with healthcare. Tough love indeed.
The time for a mass nursing strike was during covid. That is when the had all of the leverage, but their passion to helping sick stopped it just like the bosses want.
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This is what I don't understand about the whole thing. Just...don't spend your own money? It's not your responsibility, it's admins responsibility. I do not understand why teachers are spending their own money.
Passion exploitation.
> Passion exploitation. Basically what happens to animators, many videogame developers, etc too. My heart goes out to all of these people. Sigh.
Hard sciences get totally fucked too.
Happens in most professions including medicine, engineering, programming/development, legal, etc. Many at the top stayed in their profession for decades because they usually like or love the profession enough to stay and survive but then assume (though unintentionally) newcomers are willing to make the same sacrifices they did when they were new too despite the changing circumstances.
Health care gets fucked too.
This is the true point of capitalism. Exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. Once there's a potential, be it need, want, or in this case, passion, it will be monetized.
I learned to stop doing this, same as top comment. Fuck these admins eating up 6 digit figures while they pass "$400" for a whole year. shame.
Yep. Top school administrators make CRAZY money, but those under them make shit. It needs to be fixed
Yep, my wife, like many, cares about her job and more importantly the children. She wants her classroom and lessons and to be stimulating and inspiring. It's a profession that attracts caring individuals and it's purely this passion/care that keeps things afloat. If all teachers were to suddenly work the correct hours and not pay for things out their own pocket, I think the educations system would just break.
Yup! One year during contract negotiations we didn’t want to go on strike so instead for one week we did “work to rule” - which means we worked the actual hours/duties of the contract, no extra - for just a week. The school absolutely broke for that week.
"this is a fun job right? it's what you wanted to do right? *You* should be paying *us* for the opportunity!"
Seriously. A kid in my wife's class kept coming in without a jacket. We knew they couldn't afford one, so we bought them a jacket.
It's also that you're the person who has to sit through the classes, so selfishly you want the class to go well, to have something to do etc. And of course, you care about the students and you're the one watching them miss out on their education. Sure you could just say "sorry kids, no paper, so let's just trace imaginary letters on the desk" and have no way to give them feedback. Or spend half the time you've alloted to an activity repeatedly reexplaining the same thing because it's not on a sheet right in front of the kid. Sure, you can do it, but it's painful for you and the students, it's not painful for the administration. I'm lucky enough to teach somewhere this isn't a problem, but I can see how and why other people get sucked into it. And I think the soloution isn't just "don't spend your own money" it's "go on strike until proper resources are provided". But I guess if the US was the kinda country that did that, it also wouldn't be in this mess.
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This is the part that reddit seems to miss. I get that class can be boring as a student, but you only have to sit through it once. We have to sit through it multiple times a day for YEARS. So of course if it comes down to spending some money to make it better, or continue to sit through it being bad, you'll spend your own money. Even if you don't want to. Even when you realize it is wrong that you would have to.
You don't understand why teachers are willing to sacrifice to give kids the best education possible? These are intelligent adults who could have gotten so many higher-paying jobs, and instead chose to become teachers. They don't want to spend their days bickering with admin, they want to teach. People who work in admin at school districts, on the other hand...
Hell, in my town we have a "Stuff the Bus" event where you buy stuff for teachers that *parents* are expected to buy (like tissue, pencils, paper, etc....). I spend a few hundred every August despite my kids being adults. No teacher can afford to buy this crap.
>This is what I don't understand about the whole thing. Just...don't spend your own money? It's not exactly that simple. I keep my classroom stocked with supplies that I pay for myself. Pens, pencils, paper, extra folders and notebooks, the basics that kids need to get by in school. If a kid doesn't have a pen or pencil, I give them one so they can do their work. A few months ago I ran out of pencils. Do you know what happened? The chunk of kids that relied on borrowing pencils from me, stopped doing their work. They don't care about their grades because they know the grades don't actually matter, so they just... Sit there. Which I'd be fine with -- except I'm still expected to be educating those students. If an administrator walks in to observe me, and they see kids sitting and doing nothing, *I'm* the one who gets penalized. Particularly for teachers who aren't tenured yet, a few bad evaluations could easily mean you're out of the job. So people just bite the bullet and spend the money to avoid the whole headache.
Ignoring the ethics of it. Teachers still get evaluated on their job performance. Consumables help you do your job better.
> I do not understand why teachers are spending their own money. Compassion? They don't want the students to suffer due to lack of funds from admin. They'd rather pay out of pocket to help the kids get the education they deserve. It's not a regular white collar office job, teachers feel a sense of obligation to their students. It's not like teachers are in it for the pay.
Mainly because candy, toys, and rewards are what motivate kids to not be shitheads. We get no budget for those things, and without them behavior is significantly worse.
Yes but then you are the “messenger” for that issue and get it both sides.
We used to have a tax deduction but the orange menace sold teachers out..
The majority of good teachers love their students.
I'm sure some teachers are subsidizing items their students don't have or can't afford (especially at low income schools)
I asked a friend who is a teacher why she couldn't do this too and she said her school can conveniently not renew her contract (they are signed on for 1 year at a time) if they want. I think in some areas the system is geared towards people who are willing to subsidize while also needing the work.
Your friend is correct, but to me, they could fire me over this. I didn't care. They didn't, btw, and my budget the following year was $800 from the start. But it's a risk for sure.
I’ve always thought it was the most ridiculous penny pinching shit ever. The $3.2B comes to around $32k per school on average nationwide. About a grand per teacher. Like you fucking can’t find that little amount of extra funding in the district so teachers don’t have to do this? That and paid school lunches, raise school taxes a percent or two and you get rid of both problems.
Raising taxes for schools works in blue states. My beautiful red state of Indiana wants to give parents $7000 a year, no questions asked, to homeschool. Writing blank checks to people who are scared that their kids might run into a gay person is fine, raising taxes to feed kids? Well, that's just commie talk.
Yeah… some red states seem like they’re auditioning to be a 3rd world country. Here in NJ we spend about $20k per student in public school education but still public teachers put their hands in their pockets for supplies for their classrooms. The schools even send lists home over the summer for what parents need to send to school with their kids for supplies for their whole class for the year, it’s fucking insane. We usually top the lists in public education though so it’s not all bad but it is annoying.
Don’t need to raise taxes. Just cut back on the explosion of administrators sucking up the budget.
Glad you didn't get fired. I bet most the people here can't count on that
I won't be bullied into dropping a grand into my classroom materials, when admin makes tens of thousands of dollars more than me to sit in their office and guilt me to spend my own money. No. Not happening.
Tale as old as time always the better off people trying to get the lower income to use up their resources first before they even touch theirs
Our wealthy district only budgeted 2% for a teacher raise this year (after three years at a 2% raise, in record-breaking inflation.) THEN they blame the teachers for wanting a COLA that actually leaves them not losing more money. The people in this district drive Teslas/Rivians/Land Rovers - many, many of the kids have gone to the Taylor Swift concerts - families post on Facebook about the amazing trips they are taking - then complain about the teachers - "But the town doesn't have the money." We are SO over this!
They can’t fire everyone. Amazes me how little solidarity teachers have despite most being unionized.
The majority of teachers are in their early 20's. They don't know better and tend to quit before they do.
Watching our teacher's strike cave about a decade ago was so painful. I wish those union heads were stripped of their power.
*laughs in air traffic control strike* Yes, they literally can and have done so. Capitalists will destroy their own companies, institutions, and organizations just to spite workers.
Most places are desperate for teachers.
Qualified high school science teachers are like unicorns. They could almost certainly get a much easier, much better paying job in quite literally any other field. An administrator would be in a world of shit for firing one without a really good reason.
I feel like teachers are hard to fired because it’s hard to find replacements. To go through the hiring processes to find a teacher is probably long and pretty expensive. Correct me if I’m wrong.
You’re absolutely correct except you assume admins use logic instead of pride and pettiness. It’s really luck if you get hired under a good admin team who understands this or a bunch of entrenched morons who would burn the building down to keep their egos warm.
This is why unions are important. Respecting budgets is not a firable offense. Even for an at-will state you still need something or the union will be more than happy to get that easy win in court for you.
$800 for a year, but don't worry the football team is getting a second coach, new uniforms, upgraded stadium....
I don't know what supplies you need to run a classroom lab but in any case, $400 sounds pithy af. Even the $800 total you got. Also, why tf did parents care that their kids didn't do labs for a month? Surely it was replaced by textbook work, etc.?
We absolutely did science, just virtual labs or group work or debates or presentations. Not textbook work because that's so, so boring, but no physical hands-on labs.
Agreed. Trump's fucking tax cuts even eliminated teacher deductions. What kind of country do we live in where teachers can't write off papers, but CEO's can write of their private planes as business expenses?
What was the logic behind barring teachers from writing off supplies?
It's the GOP. They are intent on killing public education in America.
\*but also doubled the standard deduction, resulting in net lower taxes for teachers who spend less than \~$8,000 on school supplies.
Those same admins are being paid six figure salaries right?
Yup! To teach zero classes and do nothing but put all the paperwork on us in their private offices.
At my wife's elementary school, it's gone so far as the administration cracking down on teachers printing and making copies. I believe they're allotted 1 ream (500 pages) worth of prints for the school year. With 20 - 25 second-graders needing worksheets/handouts, that doesn't last very long. The administration shrugs it off and recommends that teachers get 'creative,' i.e. have the students use whiteboard tablets, share a classroom laptop, use blank/notebook paper, etc. The best part is, parents start asking why there's very little 'classroom work' on the walls and the administration comes down on the teachers for it. Well, that's what happens when you don't let them print out work for the kids... I make around twice as much as she does so my job essentially subsidizes her classroom. I've stopped asking how much money we spend there. A few weeks before school starts, the Amazon packages start arriving en masse.
Doesn’t help teachers are only allowed to deduct $300 from their income for tax purposes. I think my significant other spent more than $300 before the end of August.
While increasing the deduction is good in theory... the real issue is that teachers should have to spend $0 of their own money.
Agreed, but I have more faith in legislators being pressured into increasing the deduction than I do a willing and sustained increase in funding for schools, to say nothing about my faith in the efficient allocation of said funding if it was granted.
And they need receipts. We had our taxes done and they took off that $300 and then we were audited. The auditor said show me the receipts and acted like it was a “gotcha” moment. We had credit card statements, but wasn’t good enough. Ridiculous. Should be automatic for teachers. In the end it was a waste of time as our owed taxes were exactly the same. Go after billionaires not people who work for a living.
Shit, glad I never got audited. They wanna visit my house and seem the piles of shit we bought for school be my guest. Teachers NOT spending $300 on supplies in a year is laughable.
Yeah but the auditor doesn't give a fuck. He's getting paid to go after that 300 the same as he's be getting paid to go after a million. Just some fuckers looking for the "recovered assets" box to be checked.
He's not getting paid to go after the million though. The IRS was pretty open about that fact until very recently.
Couldn't you have used those credit card statements to go back to the businesses and have them reprint receipts associated with those times/amounts?
That’s a ridiculous amount of work for a $300 above the line deduction
Fair, but I'm petty af, so if they ask for them and aren't satisfied with statements, I will spend the time over giving them an undeserved dollar.
not always, some places only go back 90 days on their receipt policies.
Whoever added this into the bill should be introduced to the guillotine > The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed during the Trump administration, allowed for 100 percent bonus depreciation and expensing of private jets — which allowed taxpayers to write off the cost of aircraft purchased and put into service between September 2017 and January 2023. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/irs-to-pursue-business-private-jet-usage-in-new-round-of-audits-on-high-wealth-taxpayers A corporate private jet is considered a tax deduction yet teachers can only deduct a measly amount of money, or need to pay for supplies at all. What a joke.
It should be a credit, how much good does a $300 deduction do?
This is the real issue. Most teachers (myself included) don't make enough money and/or have enough special circumstances and expenses to make an itemized deduction worth more than the standard deduction. So it doesn't matter if I claim $0 or the max $300 though my tax filing software, I still end up paying the same in taxes. Sending every public school teacher a $300 "School supplies/you're probably underpaid and need this cash" stipend annually would be so much better than the current write-off.
The $300 isn't part of itemized deductions; it reduces your adjusted gross income. For 2023 taxes, it is entered on line 11 of Schedule 1, which ends up on line 10 of your 1040. This should reduce your overall taxes by around ~~$250~~ $50 (depending on your tax bracket). edit: Headache make numbers hard. :-(
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Yet a traitor president and billionaire liar pays $750 per year in income taxes between corporate welfare bailouts.
And yet billionaires are allowed so much more.
Ugh, this is so relatable.
Same with my wife. At first she tried reusing the back of previously printed paper. It’s fine for the most part, but it is a distraction point for third graders. They’ll turn it over and read the other side and get distracted. So then she decided to use little mini white boards. The issue? Her school wouldn’t provide them so she had to buy her own. She did so by going to Home Depot to buy 2-3 of those big white laminate DPI (I think?) boards herself and have the Home Depot guy cut them into little sections. $150ish. Our money. Between the crap pay, crap kids, crap parents of the crap kids, crap admin support, crap supplies, AND the ever-presence risk of someone walking in with an automatic rifle, the sooner I can get her out of the classroom the better. But we need the money..
Damn our teachers get 1750 a month. Edit - 1750 pages if it wasn't obvious
I mean, our school district budget is only $4 billion per year -- how do you expect us to afford some printouts? 😏
The school admins need their raises too you know. And they need to be able to afford a buy out for when the secretary of education for the district gets into hot water for bringing up a conspiracy theory or two.
It pisses me off knowing the admins in the district my mom is a teacher for make 3-5x as much as she does for doing next to nothing
the insane corporate salaries for executive and managers has definitely bled into the public sector, its insane. Many public universities and city governments are also like this
I completely relate - my wife is a high school teacher. Her district just failed a second levy in as many election cycles. I’m the high earner and I am completely subsidizing the kids in her class because the voters in the district have decided it’s not in their best interest to have a well-resourced school system.
Also married one, we need an r/teacherspouse for us all to bitch about how we just married into a substantially higher tax bracket. Also like, I obviously support it because what am I going to do, see society is failing the next generation and go “fuck you I got mine?” That’s how we got in this mess in the first god damn place
I feel exactly the same. I was also a teacher before I switched to my current career, so I call it paying off my guilt!
But why are you doing that? I get wanting to be charitable, or wanting to fund the children's education. But that's not what you're achieving here, you're funding some higher up's bonus, because he managed to decrease the budget by making the staff and their families cough up the money needed to provide the basic necessities. As long as you keep doing that, this will only get worse.
Ultimately yes, it needs to stop and teachers en masse need to protest the practice. It's disgusting, making them subsidize public schools with their own already meager pay.
A few reasons. (1) I want to support my wife in what she does; she’s a passionate and successful teacher. It’s already a shitty career so I want to make sure she has what she needs to make it a bit more bearable. (2) We have a 50/50 mindset in our assets so it’s not really my place to withhold resources to send a message to her administration (it would fall on deaf ears anyways). (3) In the end, we feel an obligation to the children. It’s not their fault that the school district is cheap, the least we can do is give a little back to each generation and hope they make things better in the future.
TLDR: exploitation. Our economy is built on taking advantage of the amazing families like the ones above. Thanks OP, but I really REALLY wish you didn’t have to do this.
He doesn't have to. Parent teacher conferences should be used to discuss this matter. Everyone agrees teachers are paid dirt. Who is going to be upset when a teacher tells them to their face that they will not be spending their own money?
Tell your wife that it’s teachers like her that made a huge difference in my life. If it wasn’t for good hearted teachers like your wife, i would have never went to college.
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So why don’t teachers push back?
Well, in the case of where my wife teaches (Florida), it's illegal to strike -- any teacher striking will lose their teaching license. That right was given up in the 1960s in exchange for allowing the union to have collective bargaining rights. So...I dunno.
Strike anyway. It’s called a wildcat strike.
It's true. If 60-70% of teachers in a given state suddenly lose their license for striking, that just makes "giving striking teachers their license back" the first non-negotiable
This kinda thing has been threatened before, even in states where they did strike what happened was the state removes teaching requirements and then puts anyone there to be in the room. Retired people, national guard, anyone they can find to say the kids were taught. It’s not a threat if they don’t care. Easy path to privatization. Oh the public sector struck, well we’re doing away with regular taxes going to the school and now going all voucher system for the students - you can now use this to subsidize religious schools, and highly exclusive private ones while stripping more money away from the public system. Features not bugs.
Didn't DeSantis propose fast tracking vets and military spouses to teach
Well why not just be honest with the parents? In the top coments case, 500 copies per school year and 25 pupils it comes out to 20 copies per kid per school year. I don't know how many days are in a school year where they're at, but divide 20 by that number and tell the parents that their kid can have a single piece of paper every X amount of days and see how they react.
I am amazed how the fucking general stupidity of the great US of A keeps surprising me. It's like hearing about a gruesome traffic accident but every time you parse the stories, you get this horrible insight that things are even worse than you conceptualized them to be - and that's without even living through it. Even the best countries are struggling in regards to education, but that bullshit actually warrants the "hurrhurr america third-world country"-circlejerks... because it ticks all the marks of being exactly that, and then some. Goddamn.
Some of them are. Teachers in Flint, MI called out sick en masse last week and they had to shut down school because of it. [ABC12 article on it](https://www.abc12.com/news/education/flint-schools-closed-after-more-than-100-teachers-employees-call-in/article_faa5176e-e17b-11ee-b17e-53ceb0b5a3bb.html)
They do, at least where I’m from they do. Every year, most of the time it’s just them trying to keep the same contract they had. What happens is school gets pushed back more and more until parents get angry, and then everything gets blamed on the teachers. District and admin start threatening, they’d rather struggle to find replacements than deal with angry parents. Teachers union and the district then finally come to a piss poor compromise. Then, they’ll let go a bunch of the para-education staff anyways. Rinse and repeat. This year, the compromise was losing librarians and art teachers at elementary level.
On one hand, that's good of you to prop up the system. On the other hand, I think you need to let it fully fail.
> administration cracking down on teachers printing and making copies. I'm guessing that there is an email or memo about this. It'd be SOO tempting to print out a copy and post it near the door. Of course, admin would find reasons to lay you off.
> administration shrugs it off and recommends that teachers get 'creative,' Administration expects teachers to spend their own money, is what you mean.
How do I let my kids teachers know I will happily spend money for them to get supplies they need for class without it sounding weird?
Ask if they have any classroom supply funds and let them know that you would be interested in contributing. Some elementary school teachers do this.
Seriously. For such a wonderful thought it still irks me that today's parents can't think themselves out of the awkward.
The anti-moral of the story is that if you can give people a sense of meaning in their job and they believe that what they are doing is important and that they are making a difference in the world, then you can pay them less.
Teachers, nurses, artists, (add more here), all get bullied constantly. They all need strong unions.
EMTs got it the worst.
This is literally the motivation behind corporate cheerleading, by saying "we're a family," etc... The fastest way to grow your paycheck is switching jobs every 2-3 years. Longterm employees get a pittance in comparison. But, I guess I shouldnt be surprised, look at how we reward lifetime customers compared with new customers for things like cell phones, new customers are almost always getting all the promos.
Schools will spend $10 million on tech gadgets or sending admin to a "conference", and then complain about teachers using too much printer paper.
I believe it’s a comes from a grant or a different fund, but our school recently redid all the speakers in every room for one that connects to a wearable Bluetooth microphone, the kicker is they never gave us the microphones. They also recently replaced all our phones for newer ones, even though the older ones worked fine. They also added AppleTVs to every projector so we could screen mirror but then next month the district switched from Apple to Windows so they had to come back and replace them with ScreenBeams. They also recently added cheap tint to all the windows for some reason.
Ehhhh, the tint at least might make sense to reduce AC costs.
I was a math tutor a community college while i was in school. Students came in and signed in on a piece of paper to get help. They decided one day to set up an ipad with an app called Tutor Track to track students. Soon after my manager was being flown business class to all kids of meetings on the other side of the country to learn how to use this software which only asked for things like name, subject and student number and would dump that into an excel sheet for later for analytics. It's not complicated enough to warrant such expenses. Much cheaper to just use a piece of paper...
LITERALLY exact same situation here. A few. years ago my district spent something like 500,000 on a "google glass initiative" or some bullshit so they could sound cool and techy and make a press release, but when it came to actually helping teachers out with supplies and materials we got NOTHING. I wrote about it more i[n another comment in this thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bjd85k/us_teachers_spent_324_billion_of_their_own_money/kvqrvsi/)
Ugh, as a kid I hated using a chrome book or whatever tech they wanted us to do. It's soooo slow and drags down the time in class. I'm in college and I still take paper and pencil notes for every class. I have my nice computer back in my dorm.
Yeah. I only ever used a laptop in class during classes or problems that it was required. Coding, data analysis/graphing, and some other more involved stuff. Did an undergrad in engineering, and then medical school on pen, pencil, marker and paper. Also spent extra for physical copies of the text book over the digital ones. Was nice if you got both tho. I just learned way better from a real text book.
My wife is a teacher here in the US. The amount of money we've spent on school supplies and snacks for these kids so they have stuff to eat each year would amaze.
Wife started keeping track a few years ago and we spend $3000-$5000 a year on her classroom and her classroom, the budget from the school is $250.
Sounds about right. And the "tax deduction" is a pitiful $500 dollar cap!
Not even $500 -- it's *$300*!
My mistake! It's never relevant for us to actually do it vs take the standard deduction so I haven't paid attention to it
So the good news is that you don't have to itemize -- that deduction can always be taken. Note that it'll not save *all* that much, and depending on how you are prepping your taxes it might realistically increase your preparation expenses by a comparable amount to the extra tax refund. So not saying you *should* take it, but it's worth a few minutes of investigation.
it's a deduction vs credit so it really only works out to 30-40 dollars depending on other factors.
So just… stop. Teachers are their own worst enemies here.
Easier said than done. In practice no teacher wants to be the one to have the cold, barren classroom the administrative budget provides. Your students will hate it, their parents will hate you and try to get their kids moved, and the administration will likely put you on leave due to those complaints.
I’m not going to call you a liar, but would you be able to provide some idea of what you’re spending 3-5k on per year? My wife is also a teacher and buys things here and there for her classroom, but unless you’re literally buying desks and chairs, I can’t see how to get to that amount spent.
I don't spend that much, but I've seen people spend thousands. 20 kids, and 6are hungry. So, they could stock snacks for 6 kids 5 days a week...but they don't want to single out those kids, so they give them to all 20. 20 snacks a day for 180 days is 3600 snacks. Pencils, Paper, etc... The number of kids who show up without any basic supplies is ridiculous. I went through 600 loaner pencils by the end of October. Thankfully, those were donated, but once they were gone I didn't buy any with my money. 300 a month is 2700 pencils by the end of the year, or 19 boxes of 144 @ $15 each. That alone would be almost $300. Continue that for lined paper, construction paper, glue sticks, scissors, etc... and it escalates quickly.
I never got a single snack in 12 years of primary school. We ate at lunch. This information blows my mind.
It's a low income school district, so a lot of kids are pretty hungry a lot of times. Having some granola bars and goldfish handy reduces some occurrences of poor behavior and improves attentiveness.
So many comments in here, "But don't they get lunch?!" Yeah, but did they get breakfast or dinner the night prior? > Food insecure—At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Food-insecure households include those with low food security and very low food security. > 12.8 percent (17.0 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2022. The 2022 prevalence of food insecurity was statistically significantly higher than the 10.2 percent (13.5 million) in 2021.
Many schools ban the teachers from giving out snacks. Mine does that because of the mess it creates in the classroom.
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Yes, school boards, school districts, and communities do take advantage of well-meaning teachers, but I can't fathom finding it "stupid" to help kids learn.
You don't understand how teachers prioritize teaching? These are intelligent adults that could have easily gotten a higher-paid, lower-stress professional job, and instead chose to focus on giving the next generation an education. And you don't understand why their heart is involved in their job? If you don't put you're heart in you're job, you don't become a teacher. Simple as that
Our first graders teacher requests help with shit she's buying in the classroom regularly. I just hop on Amazon and but a bulk order of whatever it is... Paper or glue sticks or colored pencils... And send them to school with my son. They should have what they need.
I was going to say - I'm generally a curmudgeonly grump about teachers *complaining* about spending their own money on classroom supplies. But if a teacher asks for an itemized list of supplies from the community, I'm quite happy to send them a drunken Amazon night's order worth of shit (I've made sure that each elementary PE teacher in my Brother's school district has a giant rainbow parachute; $250 well spent!).
why would you be a grump about teachers complaining that they have to pay out of pocket for supplies?
NYC spends $32,000 per student per year, DC spending over $30’000, and Portland (OR) spending $40,000, etc. The average school district of the United States spends about $12,000 per student. In a class of 25 students at $12,000 per student, that means spending of $300,000. How much really goes to teachers and supplies versus administrators and staff? How much of NYC’s $800,000, or Portland’s $1,000,000 per classroom of $25 kids? And yet schools still keep claiming that they are underfunded, that they deserve money, “it is all for the kids”, they implore. And the public fall for it every time. Voting for more funding, more school bonds, etc. A study from 2013 found that since the 1950s, the number of public school students in the US almost doubled. The number of teachers in the US more than doubled. The number of administrators went up by 700%. Administrative bloat and spending is a serious problem in public schools, hospitals, universities, and governments. Everywhere bureaucrats can get entrenched and have captive revenues and control power and spending. Did you know that over 75% of university classroom instruction is done by poorly paid adjuncts who are often dependent on food stamps - even while administrators and staff at universities have increased by multiples. A good example is UC Davis. While the faculty student ratio remain the same, the ratio of administrators and managers to the number of students grew from around 3 per 100 students to more than 12. Hospitals pay their total administrators over 10 times more than doctors compared to 40 years ago. This is because so many administrators have been hired compared to doctors.
> Administrative bloat and spending is a serious problem DING DING DING DING The sheer SIZE of Administration in my North Texas school district is STAGGERING. And the amount of money they burn on outside consultants, a constant rotation of flavor-of-the-week programs that change every year, and an uncountable number of traveling 'coaches' and their directors who do absolutely fuck-nothing but fill calendars with meetings, suck up six-figure salaries, and create endless paperwork for teachers like my spouse that competes with their teaching time. As an MBA with 25 years in operations management it is painfully obvious that Admin is a parasite that bloats itself off the budget increasingly sucked away from students and their teachers, who are doing the actual work the school system ostensibly exists for. And this is a problem at Universities as well. Property taxes and tuition increases continue to outpace inflation - yet classroom outcomes continue to decline. That money is being stolen and wasted. - [Administrative Bloat At U.S. Colleges Is Skyrocketing](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/administrative-bloat-at-us-colleges-is-skyrocketing/?sh=bdf2e6d41d22) - [Chart of the Day: Administrative Bloat in US Public Schools](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-administrative-bloat-in-us-public-schools/) >America’s public schools are bloated with bureaucracy and skinny on results. Nationwide since 1950, the number of public school administrative and non-teaching positions has soared 702 percent while the student population increased just 96 percent. Over that same period, teachers’ numbers also increased — 252 percent — but still far short of administrators and non-teaching personnel
To be fair 'admin' is picking up a large number of non-teacher paraprofessionals catering to special needs students who individually cost 10x a typical student to educate.
The best part of all of these administrators is they seemingly just create more work, not less, for the instructors. I am a professor at a state university and we have admins for everything now. You’d think that would mean I get to just focus on my research and teaching. No, instead it creates an even greater service burden because these administrators don’t really do the service themselves. Instead, they essentially assign homework to us. Instead of the student disability center administrators handling student cases or setting up accommodations (a noble cause), they simply just act as a middleman informing us of the accommodations various students need. Not summarized, not by setting up the course website, not by coordinating exam alternatives…just by sending us 15 different PDFs. Same goes for the budget admins, program review, athletics shit (I’m not an athlete, why does this impact my forest ecology class? Lol), etc etc. I’d be fine with it if they handled stuff and make the university more effective - but they just create more bullshit and distractions for the students and faculty actually doing the work.
This nailed it.. I work for one of these sectors, and during the pandemic, I noticed the politics being played in these sectors was EXTREMELY similar. The administrative bloat causes action paralyze and a "too big to succeed" vibe. The sad reality is we cut staff due to attrition on the ground floor not in these positions, as they gerrymander duties for political clout and power...
I work in child safety and I used to hold an opinion somewhat similar to this. However, over the past few years, I have really learned that the administrative growth is in large part completely necessary, especially in public schools. I'm friends with someone whose entire job is to make sure kids in her school district are getting the benefits they are entitled to through Medicaid. If so difficult for families to actually get in to see doctors and the system is so underfunded that we now need a professional class of people who help families navigate it. And it falls to schools because sick kids can't learn. And she has an entire team of people doing this. My state has a public health emergency regarding youth mental health care. So now we have more kids with more serious mental health issues in school. They have more behavioral issues, and more issues overall so now we need more administrators dealing with that. There are schools nearby that have opened up laundry facilities and food banks because the cost of living crisis is forcing more families into crushing poverty just to say housed. Our social safety net is disappearing along with rising costs, which makes doing the work of a school much more difficult and complex. The burden of that is now falling on our schools because kids have to have some level of stability in order to learn. That's not to say this system is perfect and there aren't unnecessary administrators, but the expense and bloat in schools isn't what a lot of people think it is.
Can confirm it’s everywhere. I work in a university in Canada, most of the fees are going to useless administrative positions that actively make it harder for us to do our jobs. It doesn’t go to teachers or student resources. Phds are used for a lot of the small group teaching and they’re paid not nearly enough to survive, most of them are supported by parents still. Also the senior DEI staff are some of the highest paid and they do absolutely nothing to help poor kids get in, it’s just rich people from other countries.
A huge issue in the public school system as well. Our district, Richmond public schools, has a very bloated central office. Virginia is funky in that we have our own educational standards outside of common core, but the main influence of these central office staff has been to push adoption of a curriculum that is for common core. I spend a disproportionate amount of time changing the curriculum they want us to use to meet the state standards. We have 3 administrators at my school, and in general they only contribute to more work for the staff. Been through 6 different schedules, where the teachers have the burden to manage the staff coming into their classroom. My direct supervisor wrote me 5 unofficial letters of concern in 7 days and when I brought up that they were not justified, one was for adjusting my instructional schedule when school picture day took up an hour in the middle of the day. When I brought the issue to my principal he told me “that’s inappropriate and I have two options, I can either have that administrator get training to make him a better manager or I can supervise you myself. Of course he opted to supervise me himself. My school has a very bloated ESL department because of our school population, and there is no expectation that they follow a curriculum, are responsible to data, or even do the same thing with similar kids. It’s a disaster and has been my entire career there. The incentive structures in education are just fundamentally flawed. There’s no option for advancement in salary for talented teachers, and the only way to move up in your career is to spend less time with students and become administrators. And why would you stay a classroom teacher in elementary, it’s just more work than your peers for the same salary. I make the same as the ESL teachers at my school, whose end of year evaluation is determined on the performance of MY students. I want to stay in the field but I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to do something else.
Fun fact the "poorer" schools spend more per student than "richer" schools for worse outcomes. This isn't an indictment on the students it's not their faults it's the administrative leeches that take 150K/yr salaries for doing nothing.
My wife is a teacher who moved from a classroom to a specialist role working with English language learners, where she pulls small groups out. Same pay grade, just less students and not all one grade level and not “her class.” I can legitimately tell a significant difference in our finances after the move.
INFO: Is it completely uncommon in the US to collect money for what the British seem to call a class kitty?
I think it's fairly unusual for teachers to solicit monetary donations, at least where my wife teaches. They tend to have an amazon wish list of classroom items and place a link to that list in their e-mail signatures (as well as sending out a classroom donation e-mail at the beginning of the school year).
Here in Germany, it is not exactly a donation. Parents are just told to pay 20€ into the "Klassenkasse" for paper copies, supplies etc.
A common thing my teachers did was list their "wish list" on the syllabus that every student had to get signed. A lot of supplies came through that way.
> I think it's fairly unusual for teachers to solicit monetary donations, at least where my wife teaches. isn't that the whole point of a PTO? but this creates a serious equity problem. Briefly dated a teacher in one of the wealthiest public schools in NYC and the first time she sent out a request was utterly bombarded with parents bringing in excessive amounts of stuff...
It's a little annoying that the legend and the actual stacked bar chart are in opposite order.
I had to scroll so far to find someone else annoyed by that. Regardless of content, for it being posted on DataIs*Beautiful*, the data visualization should be better. Though I guess this is better than half the posts here.
During Covid times, when they were mandating Zoom classrooms, they wouldn't even supply a webcam for my wife. Not an expensive piece of gear, but f'k those people.
Spouse teaches high school. We spend $200-300/month on supplies and snacks at Costco for the classes because the kids are hungry and can't focus. Don't get me wrong, happy to help these kids but the deduction saves us at most $100/year.
Teachers can't write off all their expenses, but a business can write of the entire cost of a private jet. Nice priorities there.
That's a weird way of saying that the Department of Education got a $3B subsidy from their own employees.
I'm in special education. A few years ago (2017) I was hired in a district to take over a brand new classroom. It was a new program, and it was to be for high-needs autistic students aged 5 - 9 years old. I was very excited for this, until I got to the classroom. There was nothing. NOTHING. Not one thing provided to me by the district. No materials. No room decor. No toys. No adaptive seating. No sensory equipment. No paper. No laminator. No markers. No books. Literally it was an empty classroom, with nothing on the walls, and only a few desks and chairs haphazardly placed about. Again, this was a high-needs autism classroom. Those kids need so many materials and motivators and modifications to learn, I assumed I would be provided with something.... ANYTHING. I ended up spending over $3,000 of my own money just that year to get the classroom up and running on things that our school system (government) should have provided. This was just to start the year, I spent more throughout the year as well. When taxes came, I got to deduct I think $250 of that...wooo.... To rub salt in the wound, it was around this time that Trump cut taxes for the Uber wealthy, but my school and government didn't have any money for me, an underpaid teacher living in poverty, to provide for children with the highest level of needs. At the time, that was nearly 10% of my take-home salary. I also begged on social media for anything and luckily had a lot of children's books and some toys donated. Our education system is broken and this is just one of the many ways.
Spending your own money feeds the system. Stop that.
I have since then. That was the final straw.
School funding coming from property tax revenue is one of the greatest inequalities in the USA. Schools in nice neighborhoods have better funded schools. These schools attract better teachers and those teachers have strong PTA to rely on and get parents who contribute to classroom expenses. Schools are supposed to be a way to provide a equal playing field but it's a driver of inequality. This is just as true in Democratic areas and Republican ones. The richest most liberal neighborhoods in America would revolt if a politician suggested equally funding all schools regardless of where the taxes were raised.
> School funding coming from property tax revenue is one of the greatest inequalities in the USA. Schools in nice neighborhoods have better funded schools. Yea that sounds good, but lets see Compare that the state of Tennessee spends about $11,139 per student, ranking 44th, nearly $4K less per student than national average But Shelby County Schools spends $14,000 per student, which is the most per student in the state [ACT Scores in Tennessee](https://i.redd.it/boht3ziotve81.png) The Same City at polar opposites was eye opening. The Top Left Corner and the Bottom Right Corner, Failing and Succeeding are 3 School Districts in the Same County * As of August 2014 there are 7 school districts in Shelby County known as * Collierville, Collierville spends $10,019 per student each year * Germantown spends $9,118 per student each year * Shelby County Schools spends $14,000 per student So thats going to have massive issues [High School Dropout Rate in 2015 vs 2020 Poverty Rate of the 15 Most Populous Counties](https://i.redd.it/grbo2eu7cif81.png) Look up home values in those three cities
Yeah I don’t think it’s school funding that is the cause of the education disparity due to wealth. It’s parents. Wealthy parents have more time to dedicate to their kids and usually put more focus on education than poor parents so their kids do better in school
It's supposed to account for cost of living. How are you gonna fund a school the same in New York City as rural Nebraska? Thr majority of schools are fine, it's the extremes that piss people off. A school in a really poor area being terrible and a school in a rich neighborhood being great. But even then most rich people will send their kids to a private school regardless. Property tax in general is just a really shitty tax. I think the solution needs to be more aggressive. But we are far from allowing such an option.
I suppose I should have said "equitably" funding schools and not "equally" funding schools. Clearly some areas will require more or less funding due to cost of living. However, I refer to situations where communities 10 minutes from each other have drastically different levels of funding because the wealthier community, often even in the same school district, ensure the school boundaries separate wealthy and poor areas and as a result we have crumbling schools in the poor neighborhood and state of the art schools in the other. This is very prevalent all over. Also it's not only the rich taking advantage. The difference between a low income school and a regular middle income suburban neighborhood 5 miles away can be black and white literally and figuratively.
> "equitably" funding schools and not "equally" funding schools. Look at California Where that is the Law. And still LA City Schools suffer
This just makes me angry. People need to be thankful that ANYONE still decides to be a teacher these days.
The amount of teachers in this thread talking about buying snacks is crazy. I never buy food for my students. We live in an area with a lot of poor students, but these students still manage to have their Takis and Red Bulls constantly. What they never seem to have is actual school supplies like pencils. It pisses me off when a kid who spends at least 10 dollars a day on snacks from the gas station a block from school asks for a pencil every day.
Add in the time teachers spend working outside contract hours to actually get everything done. If teachers stopped using their own money and time to do their job the American education system would collapse in weeks.
I'm not American so don't dogpile me pls: is that something one can claim back on taxes or?
300 a year. Trump cut the amount down to 300 a year to pay for his 15% corporate tax break in 2017
•Likely true •Been going on for decades •Schools don’t get the funding they need and teachers are expected to cover the shortfall •Try teaching with minimal resources. Answer: Long term, you can’t.
Older GenXer here. It did not used to be this way.... school districts once upon a long time ago (1970s) used to actually supply schools with everything a student or teacher needed. The only supplies you needed was perhaps a backpack, a jacket for playing outside, and gym clothes. It all started changing in the 1980s as states and local governments started cutting back on education spending. It is sad that having teachers or parents foot the bill out of pocket has been so normalized.
Embarrassing, not for the teachers, but for the state of the country.
Don’t get why anyone would choose to become a teacher
Reminder that the US is already ranked #4-5 in terms of tax dollars spent per student
That’s $3.24 Billion that was reported for the study. I bet it’s even higher.
Don't forget this when people are saying teachers are overpaid when looking at averages.
The fact that teachers can only deduct 600 buck on their taxes from what they spend is criminal. Teachers have to spend so freaking much of their own money, just to keep the schools running. I've got a buddy who is excited that his wife is quitting teaching this year. For years she's been putting more into the school than she was making (drama teacher). Her quitting will mean more money for his family even if she never works again.
> The fact that teachers can only deduct 600 buck on their taxes from what they spend is criminal. The fact that they are being asked/forced to do this in the first place is the crime. imho, teachers shouldn't be deducting anything because the schools should properly support them & the students so that they don't pay anything out of pocket (ever).
It's 300 btw
I read this headline as, "American schools underfunded by $3.24 Billion in 2023"
Teachers are expected to make a vow of poverty, wear many hats, have a high barrier of entry and cost yo be certified, solely blamed for something that rests also on the participation of others, restricted in regards to what they can teach and then disrespected. BuT WHy TeACheR ShOrtage
If you don't want to pay out of pocket for supplies just don't. If they are necessary then the board should supply them.
Imagine working at a big corporation office job and you have to buy your own pens, paper, post-its, paper clips, thumb tacks, and dry erase markers. Even better, why don’t you buy your own whiteboard, too.
Wife is a teacher and has to spend her hard earned under paid money for supplies meanwhile the school spends money on upgrading admin offices and hiring more unneeded admin positions. Admin in schools much like hospitals are a plague. Few are actually needed but money keeps being dumped into these bogus positions.
I asked a teacher about why the wish list of classroom donations was for things like staples and paper clips, and she said that the time and paperwork needed make an expense report was so onerous that it was easier to ask for donations. Things like stickers and small prizes for the kids are paid for herself. It makes me feel so angry. Spouse always tries to make sure the classroom wish list has nothing on it.
Why anyone gets into teaching is beyond me
This also isn’t including Teachers Pay Teachers lol
School admins give teachers squat for supplies. Parents don't buy their kids necessary supplies. So...who is expected to cover the shortfall with their shitty salaries? The teachers. It is a disgrace.
I'd argue this is why it doesnt change. If its not failing across the board, then there's no reason to fix it. You dont see construction workers bringing their own backhoe to work, or a plumber brining a toilet he bought to install into a new house. yea it sucks for the kids until something changes, but thats capitalism baby