(MercuryNews.com) “Teachers learn two things early on in their careers: Out-of-pocket spending comes with the job. Don’t expect reimbursement.
But as the mushrooming cost of basics such as books and paper join newer expenses related to computers and other electronics, school officials and local education foundations are stepping up efforts to help teachers cope.
In San Jose’s East Side Union High School District that means restoring $200 reimbursements to teachers like Wendy Stegeman who shell out their own cash for supplies — something the district discontinued four years ago when finances were especially tight.
For Stegeman, a special-education teacher at Andrew Hill High in San Jose, it will hardly make a dent, but everything helps. She said she spends anywhere from $1,200 to $2,500 of her own money every year for supplies and supplemental teaching materials.
“The problem is trying to guess what you will need for the year based on previous years and inflation and numbers of kids and estimated death of appliances — VCRs, TV, lamps, computers, etc.,” she said.(more…)
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What I would like to know is, with a good portion of teacher union money going towards things like political campaigns and lobbyists, is any of that money being diverted back to the teachers so that they do not have to pay for supplies? Why it may be easy to blame the government for not funding enough, I think that teachers’ unions are just at fault here.
The teachers union are the devil and the public school system is hell. The Teacher’s Union holds a big bulk of the blame as to why our schools are in the state that they are in. If teachers had the balls to stand up to them and say can we get some of that back or even if they used the money to create some sort of warehouse that the teachers could pull supplies from then that would also serve our children.