Today we have a detailed account of the begging one teacher was forced to do because of inadequate, inconsistent funding. Though some teachers have found other ways to meet the needs of students, they're mere proverbial Band-Aids on Mississippi's funding woes. Here is National Board Certified arts teacher, internationally-renowned blogger- and Show and Tell's own- Amanda Koonlaba:
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Since 2011, I have relied on Donors Choose twelve times for a total of around $6,000 worth of materials.
$6,000 sounds like a lot of money for one teacher, so let’s break it down:
The first two projects that I was able to get funded were for my first grade classroom. These two projects were for non-consumable materials for science centers and books of varying reading levels. The total for those two projects was around $1,300. I shared these materials with four other first grade classrooms. There were about 20 kids in each class, about 100 total. That is only $13 per student. When I took another position at a school across town, I left those materials with other teachers to continue to use with their students. So, if they used those materials for the past four years with the same amount of students each year, the expenditure per student is only about $3.25. That is not very much, yet I had to beg donors on the internet to give us funding.
The other projects that I have been able to get funded have been for my visual art classroom where I teach roughly 600 students each year. We’ve gotten some non-consumable materials such as books, paintbrushes, and scissors (although paintbrushes and scissors do not last very long with that many students). However, most art supplies are consumable. Even considering that the supplies are consumable, the remaining total of $4,732 served at least 600 students. That is an expenditure of less than $8 per kid! Again, that is not much, yet I had to beg the internet for donations.
What do I mean by beg? I mean I had to constantly tweet and share these projects all over the internet. I felt like I was marketing my classroom to the public. Couple this with the fact that I’ve written local grants to make up the difference for other funding that we needed for projects, and surely you can see how time consuming this has been.
Donors Choose is a great resource, and I am truly thankful for it. Here’s the catch to using that for funding: If your project does not get completely funded, you get nothing. So, you cannot count on it. For instance, if I were to write a proposal today and set the deadline for donations in September for a project that we were going to complete in October, I’d have no way of knowing until September if I would get the materials. That makes it nerve-wrecking to try to plan instruction. You always have to have a Plan B when using Donors Choose, which for me has been asking my parents and husband to donate!
I’d like to point out a few things related to my experience with using Donors Choose. First, my district has been so supportive of my classroom. I know that they have given us everything that they could, but there is only so much money in the budget. District officials are faced with hard budgeting choices, just as teachers are faced with hard choices about where to get materials for instruction. Second, please do not perceive this post as whiny negativity! I love my students. I do what I do because I want them to have the best. However, the principle of this matter is that using Donors Choose should not be a necessity in this state, especially when it is so unreliable as I described earlier. Teachers like me are caught in the uncertainty of not knowing exactly how they are going to get ALL of the supplies that their students need, not just the bare minimum. This makes it extremely difficult to properly plan instruction. The reality is that our schools are expected to meet certain standards whether funding is there or not! This is a catch-22, which can be defined as an impossible situation from which you cannot escape because of contradictory rules. I believe that if we can come together as citizens of this amazing state to rectify this uncertainty, we will all reap the benefits!
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What about you? What is your story? Are you a public school educator in Mississippi with a unique perspective you would like to share? How does funding affect your students and your goals to educate them? First year teachers and veterans, administrators and support staff, writers and non-writers, celebrities and anonymous submissions alike, fresh perspective is what we're looking for! Let us know if you'd like to impact Mississippi education!
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Disclaimer: The blog entries shared here are individual works that do not necessarily represent the ideas and opinions of the Show and Tell administrators.
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