Not surprised since every year during my 33 years as a professional teacher I was told there was no money for textbooks, supplies or maintenance.
When repairs were needed, I got my husband in on the weekends. Ditto for custodial services - mopped and cleaned my own room, cleaned the cafeteria tables each day, swept up outside. All the custodial staff did was empty the trash cans - and that was sporadic. Was told repeatedly there was “no money” for custodians.
Repeatedly bought supplies such as pens and pencils, art supplies (I was an art teacher near the end of my career and was given a stipend of $200 for the entire year for art supplies which I had to buy from the district catalog), paper, tissues and more. No money for field trips, the buses were too expensive. Had to buy textbooks from Amazon’s secondary market b/c I didn’t have enough to go around and was told “no” when I asked for more - some teachers Xeroxed textbook. I know teachers who were limited in the amount of Xeroxing they could do and had to go to Kinko’s constantly - paid out of their own pockets - to cover assignments, one told me the local Kinko’s was filled with teachers from our school.
There was a lot more, I’ll leave it at that. I understand it is about $1,000/year what an average teacher spends out of his/her own pocket for supplies, I know for me it was a lot more than that. Depending on the year, I could deduct up to $1,000 on my taxes, some years a lot less. I always took the max.
Ask any teacher, they’ll tell you same.
My teacher buddy told me that she was seeing them intern in her classrooms and they were as dumb as I described. She also said that few of them had a love for kids. They were people who went to college because they heard in high school over and over to go to college, go to college, go to college, because college gets you ahead, blah blah blah. But they had no career vision and, once in college, looked for an easy finish. That easy finish for a lot of them was to become a teacher.
When I found out in college how much teachers had to “donate” out of their own means, that is when I backed out of teaching.
I’ve heard the same.
This teacher will tell the opposite, sort of. Parents should visit the dumpsters to get brand new school supplies purchased by other parents. If your room gets moved, somehow everything ends up in the dumpsters but funds will be available to purchase new ones (well, that was done by new to us teachers, “oh, sorry, those weren’t for our class so we didn’t know.” Lying little witches.). Heck, the budget magically found ways to increase the building trades to build the principal a new house since he was ok with the same counter tops and paint, etc. the school uses and cleans his suits, etc. We didn’t have new textbooks the same year as his house was being built but the state auditors couldn’t figure out why.
The copy room is filled with enough wasted paper to start a new forest. Custodians do a good job of cleaning the schools but are lined up at lunch time constantly emptying garbage cans from tossed out trays that walk from the lunch line straight to the garbage cans without being touched. Teachers have 17 students AND an aide or six. The troubled kids have their own unarmed security aides instead of sending them to the alternative school for everyone’s safety. There are aides here, there and everywhere but they somehow can’t hire decent teachers or principals. Often, students have to teach themselves. Why do principals always have to be ex-coaches and bring their attitudes?
This is why property taxes are $25,000 a year (not a typo) for dinky 1500 sq foot 1960s homes.