"toypup" wrote in message
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"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
news
toypup wrote:

If a business gives a needed supply, I think it should be appreciated.
Sure, it's good publicity for them, but it is a generous offer. We
shouldn't be grubbing for "what about this? what about that?" That's a
good way to discourage donations altogether. We use the money we save
from the donation for this and that. If the donation isn't needed,
turn it down and make suggestions for alternatives.

It is true that gifts should be appreciated. It is also
true that givers should be thoughtful.

Yes, but they are thoughtful when they give something that is useful for
the school and the school needs. Just because they also need books and
pencils and paper doesn't mean it's the company's job to go out and get
that, too, since they were kind enough to supply computers. Now, I'm
plenty sure they think the school needs computers. I'd think so, as an
outsider, and they are probably seeing it like I do. If the school
doesn't need it, they can turn it down. It's not like the company came by
and presented 30 live horses.
And believe me, we were grateful. However, the problem comes when people,
like yourself, see the media coverage of "X elementary got $25,000 from
VH1/Time Warner to start a band program" and automatically assume that this
means that there's $25,000 to spend on other stuff-like, say, paper and
crayons.

There isn't. There wasn't more than $250 discretionary funds in the budget
for the entire music program for an 800 student school (and the same was
true for every classroom). The budgeted funds paid for my salary, and that
was it.

The same is true when the school buys a new reading program-chances are high
that the funding came from a government block grant or state funding, and
that it does not replace funds that would have been spent anyway and could
then be reassigned.

Now, when a teacher has $250 in discretionary funds for the whole year for
her classroom to spend, it's really hobson's choice (and, in my school we
had to purchase our own photocopy paper out of that)-if you buy individual
student supplies, you're probably not going to have any money for classroom
consumables, like materials for science projects, or more involved social
studies displays or whatnot (or, for me, as the music teacher, replacing the
broken maracas that the excited kindergartener banged together too hard).
And those are things which can't easily be broken down and parents asked to
contribute to.

The bottom line is this-if most schools and districts are run the way mine
is, there's a lot of money running around, but that does NOT mean there's
any for school supplies for individual students. Which means either the
teacher pays for them out of pocket-and if you think buying supplies for
your personal children is expensive, try doing it for 20 or more-or parents
do.

If a budget allocation of say, $20 for each student for individual classroom
supplies was in place, on top of the allocation now given, then parents
probably wouldn't have to buy much.