https://www.schoolhousesupplies.org/

May I suggest also hocking the title to your car to support this cause. You keep the car AND the cash. This comes with the unique advantage of also supporting a sector of industry: car reclamation specialists.

That said, this is a great cause. My wife started her teaching career in an impoverished county and used her own money to purchase much of the necessary supplies to run her class. It’s a real struggle. Any dollar you can spare, outside of hocking your paycheck, car or house, definitely helps.

So, counties where property taxes have been permanently capped, or counties where land was never worth that much to begin with wind up having a hell of a time providing for their students. Added to this is a secondary effect of the collapse of the housing market. Drops in property value have translated to a drop in funding.

There really isn’t a federal solution to this. Education is a trillion dollar a year industry. It would require enormous sums of money to truly make an impact from the federal level. (I guess in terms of what the fed is spending these days, it would be no big deal to double down on education.)

This isn’t to say that there aren’t a number of other problems US school systems face. But, not being able to pay your teachers enough to want to stay teachers is a huge deal. The average new teacher in the US lasts about five years before moving on to something else.

After that, not being able to pay for buildings (many many schools use trailers to supplement building space), books (many schools don’t let kids take books home because their counterparts in other classes need that book too), or a host of other issues plays a role in why our school system is struggling.

My Aunt’s husband has owned his home in California for around 30 years, so he’s paying around $300 a year. Similar houses in his street are selling for one million dollars.

It didn’t surprise us that she was spending her own money to do so — she was a remarkably generous person and we knew she was spending on something that we weren’t aware of, as she lived very modestly and made a decent wage but never seemed to have any spare money, but we were kind of surprised by how little the school provided and what a need there is for help in many classrooms.

You can argue all you want about the many inadequacies of the public school system in the USA and I won’t contradict you but the bottom line is that regardless of whether the materials they need *should* be paid for by tax dollars, the sad fact is that many students are in classrooms where they are *not* receiving the materials they need to help them learn. If this organization helps match classrooms in need with people who can help, I am glad to hear it.

OTOH other software provides a “reply” button which could presumably insert a link to the item in question automatically, which could be adjusted if that item or an earlier item was deleted…just curious, really, pardon my thinking aloud.

Huh.

I teach in California. It’s difficult to convey how dire things are here.

It takes 2/3 of the legislature to raise taxes or pass a budget, and that means that a few Grover Norquists get to shake down the poor every year. It’s sinful.

Thanks for all donations! We currently only have $3 in the account!

i like that, tak.

No excuses for where he finds the money by cutting, but when y’all just had a referendum, voted down a tax hike, and voted in more expenses, there’s a certain amount of “the fool citizens brought this on themselves”… but frankly, that’s why a government should never have allowed things to get this far in the first place.

Who were the guys in charge when this whole mess started rolling in the 70s? And is it too late to drag them out and yell “This is all your fault!”

The renumbering is actually because anonymous comments get approved. They fall into queue in their natural chronological order rather than their approval order. It’s a nuisance.

I am a new teacher and struggle every year trying to find enough materials to teach my students. I end up spending most of my paycheck at the beginning of the school year on supplies.

Please consider adopting my classroom if you are a Foreign Language supporter! :)

http://adoptaclassroom.org/adoption/Locator_Adopt_Donate.aspx?ClassroomID=70524&schoolID=77978

Me, I’m going to donorschoose.org. That’s the only way I got any new stuff for the last three years.