This teacher spends $1,500 of her own money on school supplies. She says she’s not alone | CBC Radio
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The Current14:16This teacher spends $1,500 of her own money on classroom supplies
When Alexandra Sorin buys school supplies for her students, a decent chunk of the fee comes out of her pocket.
“I definitely spend $1,000 to $1,500 dollars every year,” the Grade 3 public school teacher from Toronto told The Current’s Matt Galloway.
Part of that spending goes towards basic classroom supplies like glue sticks and rulers — things outside of her classroom budget of $200 to $400, which is given to her by the school board.
“Whether you have 20 students in your class or 34 students in your class, your budget is exactly the same,” she said. “So if you average that out, it’s [usually] less than $9 for students for the whole year.”
Sorin says she’s also heard similar experiences from her teacher friends in Ottawa, Peel and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB).
She and other teachers have also resorted to Amazon wishlists and asking parents to help cover some of the expenses they can’t pick up themselves.
“If the board … or the government will love to support our schools and give us a bigger budget, that would be great,” she said. “But I think I’m wishing on stars here.”
In a statement to The Current, a spokesperson from Ontario’s Ministry of Education said nearly $500 million of funding is available for school boards across the province to purchase classroom resources, including learning materials and supplies.
“While it is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education to set policy that directs the allocation of funds to school boards overall, it is up to the individual school board to allocate funding to specific schools, services or programs based on local need,” they said.
“This gives the board the flexibility to make decisions about staffing and program delivery to best serve its students.”
Crowdsourcing for classroom necessities
Sorin says her school board gives each teacher between $200 and $400 for school supplies — but only about $100 of that is available for spending in May and June, when teachers start planning for the upcoming school year.
“It’s kind of hard to be able to determine what exactly am I going to need, considering that your class may change, the number of students may change as well,” she said. “$100 goes by in a heartbeat.”
Sorin says teachers can turn to specific distributors that work with schools for supplies, but they’re sometimes expensive and might not have a certain item in stock.
“I can’t always plan a month ahead of time what I want to order from distribution,” she said. “Sometimes it’s based on the student’s ideas and their questions, and so you have to run to the store and just get whatever materials you need to be able to enhance that creativity.”
Sorin usually buys the bare necessities in May and June, like pencils. Then, she creates an Amazon wishlist for other school supples and posts it publicly on her Instagram account.
“[I] got some nice people that are not necessarily members of my school, but members of the community, who just want to give back and make a difference,” she said.
Initially, Sorin felt uncomfortable asking the public for supplies.
“Because we’re public schools, we can’t assume that parents can afford materials,” she said. “No matter what neighbourhoods we’re in, there’s always different backgrounds, and that’s something that we need to respect.”
Eventually, her peers convinced her to write down the names of needed items on Post-it notes, then stick them around the classroom for parents visiting on curriculum night — and educational open house at the beginning of the school year —to see exactly what’s missing.
“So whether it was gift cards to the dollar store or a pack of glue sticks or markers, parents — if they could — would take a sticky note and send the materials back with their child,” she said.
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Sorin told The Current she and other teachers want to create a safe and welcoming environment for students — and supplies are a part of that.
“Students spend more time in school than they do at home, and creating a nurturing space helps support their development and enhances their learning opportunities,” she said.
A ‘worrying’ message
Annie Kidder is the executive director of People for Education, a charity that researchers public education across Canada.
She said she feels “horrified” hearing stories like Sorin’s.
“It is really worrying that suddenly, as a teacher, not only do you have to know how to be a good teacher, but you have to be a fundraiser and you have to know how to, like, market your issues out there,” she told Galloway.
“[It] signals a worrying message about our our society’s attitude towards public education, that we seem to be OK with this.”
As part of their research, Kidder and People for Education surveyed principals across Ontario about parent fundraising.
According to their findings for the 2022-23 school year, Kidder said schools in high-income neighbourhoods raise three times on average what is raised in lower-income schools.
Furthermore, they’re twice as likely to raise money for things like classroom supples and library books.
“Schools have come to rely on … parents or the community to augment those school budgets, as if we’ve kind of forgotten the public part in public education,” she said.
Kidder says many people in Canada are “incredibly lucky” because the country is “incredibly rich” with a celebrated public education system. But she said it will take work to keep it that way.
“What we have to make sure of is that we are demonstrating our understanding of how important it is by funding it adequately, but also by really, really thinking about what do we need in every classroom,” she said.
“What should every single kid — rich, poor, in the north, rural areas, urban areas — what should they all have access to?”
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