Back-to-school sales are in full swing. On the one hand, it is nice to save money on everyday items; on the other, it is a stark reminder that teachers have to fund their own classrooms. Imagine if police officers had to pay for the gas in their cruisers with their own money? Imagine if nurses had to purchase gauze and bandages with their own money? So why does society expect teachers to fund their own classrooms?

My answer is because the students need more than what the districts provide. We teachers spend so much time with the students that we take to heart the idea of in loco parentis. Listen to any teacher talk about their students and within 10 minutes you will hear the phrase “my kids.” Once you are in my classroom, you are “my kid” forever.

Teachers, by and large, cannot idly stand by when students go without. Moreover, we teachers spend all day with the students so that what they are lacking, we too are lacking. Thus we are compelled by our own self interest – and by our own sanity – to help the students.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is expensive.

Maybe if the politicians who underfund schools were to see how their austerity budgets affect students, then they would change their ways. Sadly, decades of experience tells me otherwise.

Some will say that school budgets have never been higher, that the per pupil cost is high enough.  As to the former, if school budgets increase even by a dollar every year,  they will be the highest budget year after year, but that does not mean that the schools are fully funded.  As to the latter, anyone who thinks that the budgets are high enough, I ask those people to look on the Amazon Wish Lists and/or on DonorsChoose.org to see what items teachers in their towns are quite literally begging for.

If you do check, you will find the overwhelming majority of items requested are some combination of basic supplies (markers, construction paper, glue, etc), classroom furniture (cubby holes, stools, cushions for sitting on the floor, a new rug to sit on, etc), and snacks. Students are forever asking teachers for snacks, and trust us, a hungry child is not an attentive student. So teachers are left with the Hobson’s choice of either reaching into their own pockets or having the students go without.

And it’s not like the powers-that-be are unaware.  Recently the IRS increased the amount a teacher can deduct from her taxes to offset her own spending.  The increase, a disingenuous politician will tell you, is 20%; the deduction is now $300 instead of $250.

Scott Winstead, founder of My eLearning World, estimates that the average US teacher spent $853.90 of their own money in 2023. I may not be up on the “new math,” but I think the IRS is not keeping pace with teacher spending.  Moreover, a tax deduction is not the same as a tax credit or a reimbursement.  Teachers are still out the money even if the tax deduction were to keep up with reality. And the recent round of inflation only makes matters worse.

And that reality is that the teachers in America are subsidizing classrooms to the tune of at least $3 billion each year. There is no real way to know the exact amount as many teachers make the necessary purchases and suffer in silence.

There are two ways to right this wrong. One way is to pay teachers much, much more since we are helping to fund classrooms.  The other way is simply to fully fund our schools so that teachers do not have to pay for supplies. (For the record, I say we do both.) The trouble is, our schools are funded primarily by local property taxes. Wealthy suburbs can raise far more money in property taxes than our urban and rural districts can.

What’s needed is a drastic overhaul of how we fund schools. For years the so-called educational experts — those people who have never taught but have ideas on how to “improve” education – have told us to run our school districts like a business. I don’t like this analogy because in a business if a product costs too much, that product is dropped. We can’t just not educate certain children because it’s too expensive. How ghastly.

Instead we should fund schools like the military. If we did, we’d have state of the art buildings, ample supplies, the adoration of the public and politicians, and an unquestioned yearning to never leave someone behind.  Then maybe back-to-school shopping would be a red, white, and blue patriotic event, instead of the obligatory shopping spree which leaves the teachers blue and their credit cards bleeding red.

Michael Maguire teaches English Language Arts in summer school. The views expressed here are his own.