School spending: Parents and teachers

Molly, Anna, and I went shopping for school supplies yesterday. It’s always a bit of a giddy shopping trip; choosing which color for the composition book, 16 or 24 box of crayons, Elmer’s or Rose’s glue…getting to buy colored pencils…oh my! We were there for at least an hour.

Total cost: $47.00 for two kids.

The trip reminded me of my own teaching days when I’d make my late August trip to the teacher’s supply store. I really liked these certain desk name tags that had a number line along the bottom and the alphabet across the top. I always needed clear contact paper to cover the name tags and various other stickers, notes, and supplies. Teaching was expensive!

Just how expensive? According to Administrator magazine (opens in a new window), K-12 teachers spend an average of $475 per year on materials for the classroom. Elementary teachers spend a significantly higher amount ($539) compared with middle ($393) and high ($427) school teachers.

iLoveSchools.com (opens in a new window), reports that teachers spend over $650 of their own money to buy classroom materials. To ease the burden, iLoveSchools offers a donor-matching service for education. School teachers build wish lists of equipment, materials and supplies. Donors locate teachers a search and offer their donations of new or used items or the cost of the teacher’s wish list.

How much are your school supplies this year? And, if you’re a teacher, how much of your own money do you plan to spend on classroom materials? Tell us here, and then join a national survey (opens in a new window) at Edutopia about how much of their own money teachers spend on their classrooms each year.

This is a topic I’ll be revisiting throughout the year. My local PTO is trying to figure out just how we can better support our teachers with expenses like this; we do give teachers money at the beginning of the school year, but it’s clearly not sufficient! I’ll let you know what solutions we come up with.