Notes From The Education Underground: The TeachWonk Diaries

This morning I was getting ready to go to work and I was listening to NPR of all things. What they were talking about is how the State Of California (in its infinite wisdom) had abolished the tax credit that teachers received to partially reimburse them for classroom materials that they buy out of their own pockets.

It's a not-so-well kept secret that many teachers spend quite a bit of their own money for materials that the kids use in the classroom. The NPR "talking head" indicated that teachers in the Los Angeles area spend on average of more than $1000 per year on student materials.

The tax credit in question was worth only a few hundred dollars.

The parents of California can sleep soundly. Whether its professionalism or simple stupidity, teachers will go on paying for the materials needed to help other folk's children with or without any type of reimbursement.

Its strange that these teachers would never think of sending a letter home to the kids' parents asking for a donation.

But even if some teacher did think of the obvious, he or she couldn't send that letter, because our wonderfully helpful school administrators (helpful school administrator--an oxymoron?) have told us that it is illegal (at least in California) to ask kids (or parents) for any help in buying any sort of materials whatsoever. "Fundraisers can only be for fun stuff," is just but one of the absurdities that administrators foist on us.

Of course these same bureaucrats won't show you a written legal citation as to why such a letter can't be sent.

Because you are just a teacher, you're expected to take their word for it.

In fact, many administrators expect teachers to "pay-to-play." One of the highest ranking district bureaucrats in my school system once told me (many years ago) that, "The best teachers always spend a lot of their own money in their classrooms."

Strangely, administrators don't seem to spend any of their own money on any classroom. At least they don't around the Middletown Elementary School District.

And that tax credit? According to NPR, the state assembly repealed it because "California cannot afford it."