If you’re on social media, you’re no stranger to fundraisers.
Health issues, job loss, natural disasters are among the many reasons people go public with their pleas for financial help.
A newer initiative is a drive among teachers who are reaching out to get much-needed supplies for their classrooms. Amazon Wish List, Go Fund Me and Donors Choose campaigns enable educators to list many of the needed materials that, if not for the generosity of others, would have to be purchased out of pocket or gone without.
Dry erase markers, books, bulletin board décor, fidget toys. These are some of the many things teachers often have to pay for themselves. Sometimes the wish lists include even more basic supplies such as pencils, rulers, markers and notebooks. And some ask for more unusual items, including floor pillows and party supplies.
The entry-level salary for a public school teacher in Illinois is $40,000, according to the Illinois Education Association. For a new teacher or a veteran teacher struggling financially, changing grade levels or seeing a need go unmet, the financial burden of purchasing supplies can be severe.
“Teaching is such a mission-driven profession,” English teacher Patrick Escobedo said. “You love your students and you want to do everything you can to make them successful. When it comes to resources, if they’re not being provided, there’s this sense, ‘I’ll take care of it myself.'”
Escobedo, who works at Fenton Community High School in Bensenville, is president of that local teachers’ union.
“We surveyed our members and they told us they spent on average $400 a year out of pocket just on supplies for the classroom. That means some people are spending well above that,” he said.
While out-of-pocket expenses may not top the list of reasons teachers leave the profession, Escobedo said, add them to other critical concerns among the professionals and they can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
They also illustrate the common disconnect between administration and faculty, he said.
“What a teacher knows students need and what administration see as a priority from a top-down view often don’t align,” he said.
“Many teachers are asking for things that are not exorbitant,” he said. “They’re tools they know will help their students learn something new or help them adapt to their learning style.
“But if I can’t get support from the administration (to get these items), I’m going to find other ways. I’m going to do whatever it takes,” he said.
Fenton is now in its ninth month of contract negotiations, Escobedo said. “We’re fighting to keep courses that help kids who are struggling, to keep plan time so teachers can do their best, and now I’ve got to go spend hundreds of dollars out of my own pocket on supplies. That can be a bridge too far.”
According to the Illinois State Board of Education, the shortage of educators — teachers, support staff and other licensed professionals — in Illinois has grown steadily over the past six years, from 2,006 in 2017 to 7,137 in 2023.
Nevertheless, Escobedo said he understands why a taxpayer may be reticent to get behind yet another campaign asking for funds from the public.
But, he added, what people don’t realize is “sometimes the people making the decisions and the people executing in the classroom have very different views about how to allocate funds.”
In addition, he added, there is a serious imbalance of funding from one district to another.
“There are under-resourced districts where it’s a real struggle. And there are other districts that have more than enough,” he said. “That often determines which teachers end up doing a lot of the fundraising.”
His wife teaches special education kindergarten for Chicago Public Schools. The unfunded supply needs of her students are greater than many of the students in suburban schools, he said.
She has organized an Amazon Wish List and Donors Choose campaign, he said, both of which added to her workload.
“It was almost like another full-time job for her,” he said.
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The stress of not having the materials you need, Escobedo said, can contribute to burnout.
“The teachers in our building work on average an extra nine hours per week. That’s an extra workday every week,” he said. “So you’re giving all this time, now your pumping back your own income.”
It is not coincidental, he added, that the national teacher shortage today is “concentrated in the realm of new teachers because it’s just so hard sometimes to balance all that out, to deal with the emotion of it.”
Granted, he said, “nobody got into this to be rich” but who needs a financial burden on top of everything else?
“When you know what these students need to learn, you’re going to do whatever it takes, you’re going to fight for them, you’re going to pay for if you need to pay for it, you’re going to fundraise for it if you need to fundraise for it,” Escobedo said.
“At the end of the day, it’s this deep feeling we all have that our students need everything they can have to be successful.”
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years.