Last week, an elementary teacher tearfully confided to me that she has a credit card she keeps secret from her husband.
The teacher doesn’t use the secret credit card to add to her designer shoe collection, to hit the spa or even to by presents or to go out with friends.
Instead, she uses the plastic to pay for things like copying paper. And dry erase markers. And books like “Charlotte’s Web” and “Pig for President” and “Junie B. Jones and the Yucky, Blucky Fruitcake.”
The teacher, who has been in the field for about 10 years, says she first spent money out of pocket on her students back when she was still an eager to please first-year teacher. Back then, she told herself she would stop spending once she had a classroom library in order and a few backup resource materials for students working above or below grade level.
But in recent years, she says she has found herself spending more, as her cash-strapped district has been pushing her principal to spend less and less on supplies for teachers and their classrooms.
“I feel like we are being asked to do even more with less,” the teacher told me. “And I look at what my students might be missing and I hate to see it – to have them shortchanged. So I go out there and spend the money myself. And hope that in the end, my marriage isn’t what suffers.”
Later this month, the current lame duck Congress will return to Washington to consider several pieces of education legislation. Among them will be tax-related legislation, including whether to extend the so-called teacher tax deduction, which currently allows teachers to deduct up to $250 a year for school supplies. There has been some discussion, too, about upping the deduction to $500.
In the grand scheme of things, the extension or even expansion of the tax deduction would be a small gesture. But it might go a long way in helping teachers – and reducing a bit of the sting they currently feel when they open up their pocketbooks for their students.
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