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Today, teachers got an email from Mark Johnson, @MarkRJohnsonNC about a new website that shows how money is spent in NC public schools. His intro video and the headline numbers make the funding amounts seem impressive... But they're really woefully inadequate (thread) #nced
Sidebar: the new website is a slick SAS production that I'm sure cost the state a pretty penny to make available. Forgive me if I don't jump for joy at sending more money to SAS when they have built such a quality product in EVAAS </sarcasm>.
I'm going to focus on the instructional supply and textbook money. To be clear, this website includes all funding sources: state, local and federal. The site trumpets $511 per teacher in instructional supplies and $795 per teacher in textbook funding.
That works out to an average of $42.46/student for textbooks and $30.12/student for supplies. The teachers in the crowd are already laughing.
For a point of reference, I taught at a high school summer STEM camp several years ago that budgeted $10/day/student for supplies. Now granted that's for a lab based chemistry program... So in 1 week we spent more on supplies per student than the state spends in a year.
Let's look at the textbook budget first. I was lucky to get a new textbook last year. My old one was published in 2004 and was 13 years old. There are many other teachers in my building who haven't seen new textbooks in over a decade.
Our calculus classes? Their book is from 2001. Our statistics books are roughly that old too. Our AP Environmental books? 2004 also. Do you think anything has changed since 2004 in Environmental Science.
Looking at that textbook funding, is painfully obvious why our books are so old. The state contract price for my book is $163.48. It's now 2 years old but was selling for $240ish on Amazon when it was new.
With the paltry $42.46 per student per year for textbooks, that means that in my students' 4 year HS career they are allotted $169.84 total for textbooks. Success! We can use the allotment for each student to buy them *one* textbook for all of high school.
Ooh. And they'll have $6.36 extra to spend on textbooks for their other 28ish courses they'll take in high school. Bonus! </sarcasm>
Lets see what we can do with that hefty $30.12/student for supplies. We'll start with making copies of handouts, tests, etc. My district operates an in-house print shop that I assume charges per copy so that it covers the costs and no extra. That's currently $0.0125 per copy.
Assuming 7 classes per student, that means I've got $4.30 to work with per student. That means that I could make 344 copiers per student per year. Well that's doable... Oh wait... That's not a copy budget. That's *all* supplies...
Have I mentioned I teach chemistry? That's a lab science. I need chemicals... I need glassware... I need equipment. For this school year, I ordered $600 of lab supplies before school started. Last year, we needed new pH probes in addition to the typical needs ($1200 total).
Psh. I've now blown through the entire per pupil allotment for students FOR ONE CLASS. Those students still need things for all their other classes.
I've been very fortunate in the past 10 years to work in two schools that are well supported financially by the parents and other funding sources. Instructional supplies are something that schools can get donations for. That's the only reason we're functional.
Compare that to textbook funding. That's done by the state... And you saw before how absurdly inadequate it was. Using some other numbers on the site, I calculated that they're funding textbooks so that I should get new textbook edition every *22.6 years*.
So yeah, thanks @MarkRJohnsonNC for putting up this great site. Now we can all see how painfully underfunded all the schools in NC are. If you're serious about improving NC public schools, then start advocating for improving our funding rather than making a flashy website.
Per pupil expenditures in the state are still 9% below 2008 levels (adj for inflation). Textbooks are 45% below and instructional supplies are 55% below 2008 levels.
All this and many other reasons are why you'll find me marching in Raleigh on May 1st wearing red. And why you can be sure I'll vote for people who are serious about improving education funding in NC.
How did I forget to add this? This is easily one of the dumbest ideas I've heard. Let's take money away from districts which get the benefit of state contract pricing and sales tax refunds and give it directly to teachers who get neither.
