The kids and I went back to school shopping today. I spent about $100 on their supplies. I ran into one of my friends there. She asked me "Don't you ever wonder why we have to spend so much money on supplies for our kids when we send them to public school?!" She was obviously frustrated and I understand her frustration. I have to spend money on supplies for my public schoolers too.
The difference, though, between my friend and myself is that I am also in the public school but from the other side. I am a teacher who requests those supplies from parents, and here's the reason. I will have a budget of about $200 that I can use for any and all supplies that I need for my classroom this year. This includes buying my own copy paper and any other supplies I want to have for my students.
Please realize that as teachers, we are expected to be able to provide children with challenging, thought provoking, real life lessons. We are expected to provide them with lessons on how to behave at school, in public, at home. We are expected to practically raise some children. I will teach a total of about 100 students this year, for 36 weeks, on a budget of $200.
Please don't be upset. It is difficult to do all that we want to do with such a limited budget. Ask your public school teacher what might be on his/her wish list...more often than you might realize what they have on their wish list is as simple as a bottle of hand sanitizer or a multi-pack of kleenex. Occassionally they may ask for candy. They may ask for you to bake something and send in. This is only because we just can't do it all ourselves. We can't afford it, nor can we do it all as one person.
There's my mini-sermon for this week.
Have a great beginning of school! :)
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4 comments:
Don't even get me started on the crappy budgeting that is set aside for teachers. That just bugs the CRAP out of me. What moran at at the school board thought that a teacher could get by with one ream of paper for an entire year for everything that her students needed? Ugh. I bought a teacher a box of paper one year for Christmas. I constantly send in stuff for the teachers. It's absolutely ridiculous. It's also ridiculous that they took away funding for our disabled professional assistant but the main teacher still has to teach these kids. Without help. RIDICULOUS. BUT, the county will build a new swimming pool when we already have three. UGH. UGH. UGH.
My response to that all is to HOUND, HOUND, HOUND your legislative representatives. They really do respond when enough people get involved. UGH. UGH. UGH.
Good Luck with the start of school! Also, have you seen Ashley's DonorsChoose.org request? It's a great site and you could set one up for general school supplies.
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=177527&zone=303
When I lived in Lexington, SC we had to pay a supply fee of $40 each year. This didn't include the long list of school supplies that we had to get. I didn't mind paying it. What got me though is I always wondered where that money went to. I know that the teachers use to have to use their own copy paper to make copies and she always reminded the volunteers to remember to get it out of the copier when we finished. She only had a certain amount each year. Moving to VA 2 years ago I was surprised that we didn't have a supply fee.
This year will be a tough year. There has been so many budget cuts within our district and so many assistant let go. They do have a cap on the number of students in each classroom though.
Hope you have a great year!
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