Every day of my life I feel blessed. I have a fantastic wife, a three-month-old son who sleeps twelve hours uninterrupted each night, a nice house, car and good parks nearby.
I also have a good job. I am in my twelfth year as a public school teacher. The kids are good. We have lots of funding problems, but we survive. And the job allows me to live a good middle-class life. That's the dream, right?
Anyway, I don't really think about it much, but I always spend a little bit of my money every day out of pocket to do my job. My wife is also a teacher and she does the same.
We have a little black box where we throw the receipts after we return home. Again, we don't think about it much until tax time rolls around. Well, I just did the taxes. And we declared $5,000 in teaching expenses.
This probably seems kind of high, but here is how it happened...
A few years ago, we used to have reasonably sufficient funds for classroom materials. But as budgets have decreased, we now receive a hundred dollars per year to pay for these items. Last year, I worked partially in the high school library and the petty cash fund was raided by our administrators mid-year.
Honestly, I can't walk into a classroom and run a class without proper supplies. It's just against my conscience. So, I buy things out of pocket. Pens. Paper. Glue. Scissors. Books. Posters. I buy cables and computer peripherals. I buy fans for when the unairconditioned rooms head above 90. I buy carts and furniture. And, again, my wife does the same.
The library needed a complete overhaul last year, so I started scouring local second hand stores for cheap-but-good-condition books. Some of this was paid for by a book sale and donations, but I bought a lot of too-good-to-pass-up classics for kids to read.
This past year, I also attended several conferences. I need these to earn the SB-CEU's necessary to re-up my teaching certificate. So, okay, we lived a little large by attending a few out-of-town conferences and staying in hotels. We should probably cut down on that. But I can't really cut down on the hundreds of dollars it costs to pay for the new license.
My middle schoolers eat lunch at 12:50PM each day. They eat so late because budget restraints caused us to close one of our four district buildings. This requires our secondary school to run three lunches. The middle schoolers go last.
This means that they are hungry by about 10AM. The school actually mandates that we allow students to eat snack during this hour. But, of course, middle schoolers are middle schoolers. So, I always have emergency supplies on hand. The kids flip me some change, but it never covers the real cost.
There are dozens of other smaller expenses. The IRS allows for deduction of mileage to an off-site work location. So, the meetings and events that we have throughout the year off the school campus are deductable. And it goes on.
And at the end of the year, for us, that number was in excess of $5,000.
I have zero problem paying that money. We have good jobs. We live a good life. In many ways, it is the cost of doing business. And although it is a business expense for the IRS, we consider it a charitable donation.
But I just figured that this was as good a time as any to let everyone know what this unionized public school teacher chips in to make sure that his classroom works smoothly and the kids get education.
Cheers!
Note: I know that some might comment that I should apply for grant funding. And I do. Last year, I wrote about $10K worth of successful grants for my school.