We Should Be Ashamed
Sep 6th, 2008 at 6:10 pm by Susie
All the money in the world for this war, but not enough for schools:
Along with stocking their children’s backpacks, parents are increasingly helping teachers fill their cash-strapped classrooms with glue sticks, markers, hand sanitizers, toilet paper, and other basic materials once covered by school budgets.
Many teachers sent out the pleas last month before the first day of school as part of welcoming letters. Others handed out the lists last week on opening day. And a growing number, such as those at Chelmsford’s Harrington Elementary this year, posted requests on school websites, saving money on postage and paper.
The lists are another telltale sign of how budget-cutting in recent years has affected the pocketbooks of parents, coming on top of the hundreds of dollars they spend annually on ever-increasing fees for school lunches, sports, after-school programs, and buses.
With household budgets this year stretched thin by rising grocery and fuel prices, parents are questioning how much longer they can keep giving.
“Parents are starting to feel like a piggy bank,” said Holly Ewart-O’Neall, the mother of a second-grader and cochairman of the Worcester Arts Magnet School’s parent-teacher group, which experienced a decline last year in fund-raising revenue that sometimes goes toward supplies.
School districts, wanting to avoid cuts to staff and programs, have been spending less on classroom supplies and materials during this economically turbulent decade. Statewide, school district expenditures on instructional supplies and materials, including textbooks, dropped 4.3 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2007 to $334.7 million, despite a dramatic increase in the cost of many items.
“It’s a sad state of affairs,” said Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. “I’m surprised cleaning fluids and things like that are on the lists. That is going to another level and is more suggestive of how bad things are getting.”
In many cases, teachers refer to the supply requests as “wish lists,” but the items are hardly extravagant.
It’ll be a fine day in America when the schools have everything they need, and the Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy a battleship.
If we had spent an additional 1% of what we spent in Afghanistan (helping the Mujaheddin drive the Russians out) on schools and clinics after the war, the Taliban would not have risen to power, and Al-Queda would have had recruiting shortages.
I live in Indiana and from kindergarten through 2nd grade, my son’s teachers sent home ‘begging lists’ of items mentioned in the article - hand cleaners, paper towels, kleenex, etc, because the schools were not given their portion of the state funding. We had fund raisers EVERY month and much pressure on the kids to sell lots of items so they could “earn prizes” that can be found in the dollar store. Once our governor (R) has privatized our toll roads (which I don’t really agree with), it is not quite so bad but I find myself surprised when I’m NOT asked to help more. Oh, and my property taxes when up by at least 25%, so I guess I am already helping more. (Not that I mind paying taxes for decent schools.)
I just did a major trip to CVS to pick up some stuff, and while I was there, I got a bunch of thing from the teacher’s wishlist. Sheesh. I don’t think that when our school district was on “austerity” back on Long Island in 1972 we had to buy things like paper towels.
Meanwhile, the university I work for is also cutting classroom supply budgets. We’ve been cut from $7K to $4300K in the past fiscal year. We have almost 30 full time and about the same number of part-time faculty.