Imagine showing up at the office after summer vacation and finding out that you have to shell out about $500 for supplies so you can do your job. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
But that’s pretty much the expectation among teachers in the Montgomery County Public Schools. Like their colleagues across the country, MCPS teachers spend hundreds of dollars out of pocket every year to buy classroom supplies.
A 2010 survey by the National School Supply and Equipment Association found that teachers spent a total of $1.3 billion out of pocket on classroom supplies during the 2009-10 school year. Teachers spent an average of about $350 each.
For MCPS teachers, the total is closer to $400 to $500, according to Doug Prouty, president of the Montgomery County Education Association.
The association doesn’t have hard data, but Prouty says anecdotal evidence shows that teachers are digging into their wallets to buy supplies every year. “I’ve heard a number of teachers say they spend at least that much,” he says.
While MCPS is supposed to provide curriculum supplies, teachers have always paid out of pocket for those extras that schools don’t supply. Elementary school teachers, especially, shell out for items not supplied by schools, like those cute stickers on homework papers or paperbacks for a classroom library.
MCPS teachers may not have it as bad as colleagues elsewhere in the country, where funding cuts have been more extreme. In California, teachers clip coupons, spruce up yard sale stuff for the classroom, pull used work sheets out of the trash and even bring their own vacuums to school, according to published reports.
For sure, office supply stores know that teachers will be shopping. Staples and OfficeMax both held teacher appreciation days this summer, offering special savings and discounts.
A Silver Spring mom who’s starting a new career as a MCPS high school physics teacher says that preparing for the start of school has been eye-opening. Like other MCPS parents, she’s spent hundreds of dollars over the years buying school supplies for her three children.
Now she’s spending her own dollars getting ready for class. She has purchased notebooks for her students, on the advice of fellow teachers. And she’s planning to spend her own money to print class materials at an office supply store after learning that the school printer won’t be fixed in time for the first day of school.
Welcome to the American classroom.
