Gilroy
– Teachers at Gilroy High School were given $50 each at the
beginning of the school year to outfit their classrooms with basic
school supplies – for the entire year.
And after that ran out, as it did for many teachers by the
second month of school, all they could do was shrug their shoulders
and head to an office supply store to purchase classroom
necessities at their own personal expense.
Gilroy – Teachers at Gilroy High School were given $50 each at the beginning of the school year to outfit their classrooms with basic school supplies – for the entire year.
And after that ran out, as it did for many teachers by the second month of school, all they could do was shrug their shoulders and head to an office supply store to purchase classroom necessities at their own personal expense.
“I got so tired of asking for supplies all the time that I just went out and bought my own,” said a GHS teacher, who wanted to remain anonymous. “Teachers don’t get paid very much anyway, and that they have to buy their own supplies is just ridiculous.”
At the beginning of the year, each teacher at the high school was given one case, or 10 reams, of paper along with the $50 allocation to spend on basic classroom supplies such as pens, overhead projector markers, whiteboard markers, facial tissue and staplers. Many teachers had spent their allowance and run out of the paper the first few weeks into school.
The heads of each department in the high school were given a larger budget, but those dollars have to stretch over the entire department and also must pay for things like classroom equipment repair and replacement.
The anonymous teacher keeps an ever-growing collection of receipts – now numbering more than a dozen – for supplies he’s purchased with his own money since the beginning of the year. He estimated he has spent roughly $500 per year during the four years he’s taught at GHS and not once been reimbursed. He said he doesn’t expect that will change.
Along with the receipts, the teacher keeps a locked drawer full of self-funded supplies such as transparent tape, sticky notes, highlighters and pens.
It might not seem like paper and other basic supplies could get overwhelmingly expensive, but considering how much paper teachers use to teach the high school’s 2,400 students, the supply bill can get pretty steep. The biggest reason for the meager supply compensation probably goes without saying: the district’s tight budget.
Steve Brinkman, GUSD’s assistant superintendent of administrative services, said the annual compensation for standard supplies gradually has been reduced over the past few years because of a squeezed budget.
“If there’s roughly 300 teachers at the high school, multiply that by 50 dollars each, and that’s 15,000 bucks a year,” he said. “It adds up.”
Teachers took a double hit this year as a federal $250 income tax deduction expired, and the state’s Teacher Retention Tax Credit – which reimbursed up to $1,500 per teacher – was cut to eliminate the budget deficit.
Ideally, Brinkman said, each classroom is supposed to come equipped with a minimum set of specific supplies when teachers arrive at the classroom at the start of the year. But that’s simply not always the case.
“Unfortunately, for whatever reason, those supplies aren’t always on hand when the teacher comes in,” he said. “So they either have to find what they need or buy it.”
Brinkman said the problem of classrooms lacking supplies is nothing new.
“That’s always been the case,” he said. “It’s maybe more acute now as years of budget problems have mounted, with no end in sight.”
Until the district can find a way to trim its budget to fund more supplies, teachers will have to continue to rely on donations, said GUSD board Trustee T.J. Owens. But he said he considers a lack of supplies a crucial issue that needs to be addressed, and he said the district is appreciative of the various donors and organization that have given generously to the cause.
“It’s definitely a problem that has to be worked out. There’s no doubt about that,” he said. “I know teachers spend a lot of their own money on supplies.”
In response to the supply crisis, the Gilroy High School Parent Club is asking parents to bring paper and other basic supplies to the club’s monthly meetings. The club also is gearing up for its second annual donation drive to kick off in a few weeks, which will raise money to purchase supplies that are on teachers’ wish lists.
Jackie Stevens, co-president of the parent club, said the club launched the donation drive last year after hearing many teachers complain they didn’t have enough supplies. Like last year, the supply that shows up most often on teachers’ wish lists is plain white copy paper.
Prior to last year, Stevens said it was common knowledge that teachers’ supplies were thin, but news of a $50 allowance came as a shock.
“You can’t expect that fifty dollars will outfit a teacher’s classroom,” Stevens said. “We didn’t realize how limited their budget was in relation to their student load. We always knew it wasn’t enough, but we had no idea it was that limited. That’s when we decided we’re really going to focus our fundraising on raising money to buy them what they needed.”
The club’s first donation drive last year raised about $2,800, and club leaders are hoping to meet or beat that this year.
So far this year, donations to the club to help teachers have netted $1,435: a $1,000 contribution from the Gilroy Gang and Drug Abuse Prevention Task Force and the remainder from donations from back to school night, said parent club treasurer Rhoda Bress. While some of the money has helped with other things such as the high school’s grad night and a special education function, the majority of it has gone toward supplies, Bress said.
An inadequate supply stock threatens the way teachers teach and the way students learn. Visual students, for example, learn best by having a piece of paper with the class material printed on it right in front of them. Copying something from an overhead projector or a whiteboard might not be the most effective – or efficient – way for them to learn.
“Many of these teachers are spending the money right out of their own pockets, and that’s really a shame,” Stevens said. “But the bigger picture is, how is this impacting instruction? If teachers can’t copy things, are kids spending their time copying things from overheads? There are real issues in not having adequate supplies.”
Another big picture issue is how insufficient supplies affects teacher morale, Bress said.
“Our teachers are professionals, and we need to give them the supplies so they can do their jobs and be effective,” she said. “If they have to spend time even thinking about it, then we have to make that problem go away, as a community. I have very, very strong feelings about that … If they’re not being given the supplies to do their job, it does not create a positive environment.”
The general feeling of many GHS teachers seems to be that although paying out-of-pocket costs for supplies is frustrating, they’ll do what they have to do in order to teach the best they can.
While the anonymous teacher said he recognizes the low-supply situation is a product of a tight budget and is not necessarily the district’s fault, he suspects the district could use its funding more efficiently and direct more of it to where it belongs – in the classroom.
Another teacher, who also did not want to be named and has been at GHS for seven years, said the supply crisis is nothing new, but this year has been especially tough. She said she has spent $70 on two ink cartridges already this year, and there’s no question she’ll be spending more on other supplies in coming months.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever see that money again. It’s crummy,” she said. “But you do what you have to do. You have to have the supplies you need in your classroom in order to do what you want to do in the class.”
Supplies needed
Supplies needed by Gilroy High School teachers include plain white copy paper, overhead projector markers, whiteboard markers, pens, staplers, facial tissues and other basic classroom supplies.
Send supplies or donations to:
Gilroy High School Parent Club
750 West Tenth Street
Gilroy, CA 95020
Or bring supplies or donations to the next parent club meeting at 7pm, Nov. 17 in the high school’s choir room.
