One of the things I remember about elementary school was that my teachers were generally as quick with a Band-Aid or a tissue as they were with an approving smile (or a disapproving glare). I remember making popsicle stick structures, crafts from construction paper and paper plates, and I never had to look far to find a pencil.
Earlier this week, lawmakers in Harrisburg were considering a tax credit for teachers who spend their own money on these kinds of school supplies. There is already a federal tax credit of up to $300 for teachers who purchase items for their classrooms.
The Pennsylvania tax credit would be capped at $500 per teacher and limited to a statewide total of $15 million per year. That’s enough for 30,000 of Pennsylvania’s teachers. Since there are four times that many public-school teachers in Pennsylvania, this credit may only go to a lucky few.
The teachers I know routinely spend money out of their own pockets to buy classroom supplies. Tissues and pencils have always been at the top of the list, but also posters, whiteboard markers, and books. In fact, many of the books and educational games on a teacher’s shelves were paid for out of the teacher’s pocket.
Teachers start acquiring these things in the first years they are teaching, when they are being paid the least, and so can least afford it. In many districts, teachers also make requests of parents at the beginning of the year for supplies. My children’s district discourages teachers from requesting supplies for their classrooms from parents because the administration does not want it to seem like classroom budgets were somehow short.
This has just placed more of the burden on teachers.
It is deeply concerning that we are seriously considering this measure instead of finding a way to provide each teacher with a budget for classroom supplies that will cover all the things they need to create the kinds of environments that will ensure success for all of Pennsylvania’s students. It is hard to tell which is more troubling: the fact that Pennsylvania is only just now considering this tax credit or the fact that our teachers find themselves having to spend their own money on supplies in the first place.
To add to that, online retailers and big-box stores ensure that supplies cost pretty much the same everywhere in Pennsylvania. But teachers are not paid the same everywhere in Pennsylvania. Wealthy districts can offer higher salaries, so they will have teachers who can spend more on supplies. This will make their classrooms better equipped than districts with smaller budgets, thereby worsening the gap between haves and have-nots.
We have had a problem prioritizing education in this country for a while. How is it possible that we can justify paying 53 grown men the same amount to play football a few Sundays a year that we spend educating 10,000 students in Pennsylvania? It is not just sports, a Leonardo da Vinci painting can set a museum back twice as much. Patrons of the movie “Avatar” have spent enough over the years to educate 139,000 students. The cost overruns alone for building the USS Gerald R. Ford could have educated 190,000 students (the cost of the whole ship could have educated 633,000).
I think most of us would agree that teaching is the most important profession on planet Earth. One selfish example: when I am really old my doctors are going to be people being educated right now, so I want them to have really, really good educations. So should you.
We should not have to worry that students who could have gone on to be the best doctors, or scientists, or policy makers, or whatever just didn’t have any good books to read in fifth grade, so they never found the inspiration to take their education seriously. Moreover, we should not place the burden of supplying those books on our already over-stretched teachers.
While we probably need this legislation right now, the problem with it is that it seems to tacitly accept that we will never give teachers the funding they need to do the job we want them to do, so instead we are going to try to make buying school supplies a little more palatable to them.
Surely we can do better.
Will Wood is a small business owner, veteran, and half-decent runner. He lives, works, and writes in West Chester.
