Does the Average Teacher Spend ‘Nearly $500 a Year’ on School Supplies?

National Review ^ | 05/31/2018 | By FREDERICK M. HESS & RJ MARTIN

[DrymChaser]

Honestly if it was that. You did it wrong. Sorry but no way should that be true and if I had to guess it was on non-essentials.

I know from my sending my kids through school most teachers tried to pass that off to parents with their list of ‘required’ supplies.

I mean now students have to ‘rent’ lockers and locks; pay ‘fees’ to be a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior; pay fees for particular classes for offsetting expenses (labs, materials, etc.) My “free” education gets more expensive each year.

[Captain Peter Blood]

As a country we pay in excess of $1 Trillion Dollars at every level for school funding and no teacher should have to buy supplies out of pocket. No kid should have to buy supplies or books either. Too much of the Education funding seems to go to administrative salaries and they need to be cut in half and bingo you have solves your funding problem for more money.

[Garth Tater]

"A lot of good teachers work the same hours in that short year as people who work the whole year."

You have to search pretty hard to find a lot of good teachers.

[Renegade]

I taught middle school Science for 35 years and definitely spent at least $500.00 a year on supplies.

[xzins]

Our guy takes it all

[rollo tomasi]

This crap started when schools/ISDs started the commune model concerning school supplies.

You know what, can't buy your child school supplies, F.U., your kid fails; can't be responsible enough to feed and take care of your child, F.U., your kid fails;

Your kid fails because of this, F.U., we will strip you off social services, and take your kids away.

I would rather have the kids directly subsidized through some "orphan"/foster parent protocols that are heavily overseen, than go through irresponsible parents who game the system or just don't care.

Teachers go through a lot of unfair criticism because there is a legion of irresponsible parents (Included are the two parent careerists, not just the gibsmedats/ welfare variety). The voting booth and attending County meetings can cure a lot of the grievances.

[wdnhrse]

You are so very wrong. My wife has taught in Ga schools for 32 years. The starting pay for any teacher that is not at the college level, is far less than $50,000. In fact after 32 years, it is not $50,000. The main problem of student disrespect, and the low beginning wage, has created a huge turnover problem within most of the school systems.

[cyclotic]

I always wondered why these teachers never claim the spending as an unreimbursed business expense.

I sure would. I once claimed a pair of skis that I used solely for a volunteer ski club I helped run.

[Nifster]

Good for him

My guess is teachers take it all and their union dues too

[Neidermeyer]

$32,217
******
Not bad when you add in the benefits and long vaca for losers that couldn’t pass a real major...

[woodenickel]

How much does a typical auto mechanic spend on tool in a year to do his/her job ?

[GenXteacher]

I typically spend about $300. Since I teach high school I don’t spend what elementary school teachers do. Some years I spend more or less, depending on how parsimonious I can be.

[SoftballMominVA]

Over the past 3 years I’ve spent 1075, 819, 867. According to the receipts I kept. That’s not counting the occasional lunch money I “loaned” knowing it most likely wouldn’t come back. No big deal. I do my job.

[DaveA37]

‘I think that is nice of them, but I don’t believe they should get raises because THEY want to be charitable.”......

I never said they asked for raises. In fact they never asked for reimbursements either, they did it out of compassion for the kids needs, not their own. Believe it or not, there are people out there that don’t need repayment for doing a good deed. Things are not always about money.

[bgill]

It goes to the superintendent’s pay. Ours was finally kicked out, well, paid to leave after he charged the school to build his personal house, dry cleaning, etc. The school board turned a blind eye until the new math books never showed up one year. The money was never paid back. The state educ. board claimed there wasn’t a paper trail to prosecute him. Horse hockey.

[metmom]

Yup.

I was posting in a hurry and didn’t read it carefully enough.

[nicollo]

I taught at an under-funded, urban Catholic high school for 8 years. I guarantee you that few if any of my colleagues spent more anywhere near $250-%500 on school supplies.

There were many teachers who gave generously of their time, which is awesome, but they didn’t give out of their back pocket for supplies. What some may have spent money on was student fundraisers and casual help for kids and families, which can add up over a school year.

Me, I spent several thousand dollars on supplies every year simply because I detested the inefficiencies we faced, such as crappy computers and other electronics, constantly broken copy machines, and bad books. I bought my own sound/video/projector equipment for my classroom, sent nightly orders to Kinkos to pick up on the way in to work the next morning to avoid the copy machine rush/breakdown, and funded my own websites for the students.

I regularly bought used computers and monitors to deliver to families who didn’t have them (2005-12) and my wife and I endowed a scholarship for kids who were at risk of dropping out from financial hardship (focusing on working moms who made good salaries but could barely keep up w/ tuition — my favorite mom was one who made just above the poverty line and who realized that dumbasses around her refused raises that put them over some government threshold; she told me, “I work for my money!” God love her!)

So, no, most teachers don’t spend a nickle on their jobs, but some do. Similarly, most teachers suck at their job, but some are amazing.