And Would You Mind Bringing A Desk?
This story, making the rounds on Twitter, is indeed remarkable:
When Emily Cooper headed off to first grade in Moody, Ala., last week, she was prepared with all the stuff on her elementary school’s must-bring list: two double rolls of paper towels, three packages of Clorox wipes, three boxes of baby wipes, two boxes of garbage bags, liquid soap, Kleenex and Ziplocs.
“The first time I saw it, my mouth hit the floor,” Emily’s mother, Kristin Cooper, said of the list, which also included perennials like glue sticks, scissors and crayons.
As Natasha Chart says, “Because nothing says ‘superpower’ like when your public schools can’t afford toilet paper.” And, alas, there’s plenty more of this kind of news.
[...] Scott Lemieux passes along Natascha Chart’s snark “Because nothing says ‘superpower’ like when your public schools can’t afford toilet paper” and adds, “And, alas, there’s plenty more of this kind of news.” [...]
Of course, raising taxes to pay for these supplies are out of the question…
Well, we can’t ask the billionaires to let their tax cuts expire. Those artificial islands off the coast of Dubai don’t pay for themselves, you know.
We’re all Californians now.
My kids’ school has been requesting this sort of stuff for a while now, and we live in a relatively well off suburb known of the quality of its schools.
They don’t just ask for this stuff, they ask for a lot of it and we’ll usually get a followup request for more mid year. If every kid brought what was asked, there would be so many Clorox Wipes in the building that they’d have to declare it a Superfund site. When I asked about it, I was told they get less than half of what they actually ask for.
The Banana Republicans are winning their battle to turn this into a third world country.
If you liberals hadn’t taken God out of our public schools in 1962, then maybe you wouldn’t need to bring your own Clorox wipes today.
This is so depressing. Some of this stuff is just an artifact of modern fears/realities of germ control, but garbage bags? When I was a kid, it was always exciting to get each years’ worth of school supplies in the fall (even though I wasn’t nearly as extravagantly kitted out as kids these days seem to be) because it signified gaining another year of maturity and therefore, for example, being able to handle scissors with points on the ends. Now it’s just another way of dividing the kids, as you can expect that at least some of them won’t be able to afford all this stuff, and that kid will probably be ostracized (if they aren’t already).
And it’s not as if institutional supplies aren’t dirt-cheap anyway. If they can’t afford the thin, hard stuff that passes for school toilet paper, then things are really bad.
How would it not be cheaper to put in, say, a $.02 sales tax to pay for bulk supplies, then to have parents buy individual units at full retail each?
Does this happen outside the South? We do the same thing in Mississippi.
My guess was that when the public schools “integrated” and the white families moved their kids to private schools, interest in providing tax $$ for schools fell off by a few orders of magnitude.
And then, once taxes are low, they cannot be raised, because this is post-Reagan America.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. “Why should I spend My Money(tm) on other people’s kids?”
Run past the library (if your town still has one) and check out a copy of “Scapegoat Generation”, if you’re interested in this stuff. Did you know that tuition at UC Berkley used to be $525/semester?
In NJ the split was between senior citizens and families: school budgets are routinely voted down because seniors turnout at higher rates and often say, “I have no kids in school, why should I pay for it?” Pointing out that we’re paying for their social security provokes outrage (“I contributed to my social security!”) and pointing out that that generations seniors had partially paid for their kids education fell on deaf ears.
While I’m sure in the South the issue is also racialized, the desire not to spend on schools you aren’t sending your kids to is not confined to the South.
It would be cheaper, but it involves raising taxes, so nobody wants to support it politically.
Antitax demagoguery trumps practicality every time.
A recent article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about teachers spending their own money on supplies for students (an almost universal practice) generated a lot of comments that might best be summarized as “F— teachers! I got my own problems.”
Fucking hell! Since when have teachers – teachers! – become such a target of scorn? I consider teachers who spend money on supplies for their children to be some of the kindest, most good-hearted people in America today.
How do these mouth-breathers think teachers live? Do they not realize teachers have bills to pay, mortgages to pay, kids to raise themselves? Any time I see a teacher respond that, no, they don’t really stop working at 3:00pm, or no, they usually are busy during the summer, or no they really aren’t paid that well, I see people jumping on them for “whining.” They can’t win.
I really feel bad for teachers at this point. Fuck all the right wing lunatics that did some polls and figured out bashing teachers was a good way to get out the vote. Fuck them to hell. Teachers don’t deserve this.
Teachers belong to unions. Unions are evil.
Therefore, …
Because comments on newspaper websites are almost invariably even stupider and more soul-withering than comments on YouTube videos?
This is so common, apparently, that teachers can take a tax deduction for supplies they buy for their students.
The tax deduction is $250. I usually spend at least double that.
I apologize for checking out the Plain Dealer account. James Powell is correct. God, reading that thread was depressing.
Why does Natasha Chart hate America? She probably opposed the Iraq War, too. Where’s Andy McCarthy when you need him?
My kid has always been asked for small items like tissues or papertowels. I’m a teacher myself, and I’ve never requested anything from the students except notebooks, pens etc. I’ve always had to buy various items myself, its just part of doing business, and tax deductible.
However, garbage bags are a new one.
[...] * Nothing says “superpower” like when your public schools can’t afford toilet paper. [...]
[...] [...]
It’s nothing new for teachers to buy some of their own supplies and extras for class and it’s a common practice even when times are good. A relative of mine received a cash award for her accomplished teaching from the school district, with the caveat that it could only be spent on items for school. Which is not to minimize the challenges public schools and their teachers face today.
Some of this stuff is just an artifact of modern fears/realities of germ control,
Liquid soap I can understand, but the emphasis on Clorox and baby wipes is a new one.
Nothing new, in the USA. Over here in Europe, not so much.