Streeter: Kids’ school supplies shouldn’t depend on which parents can still afford to give

For years, Mindy Carlson was proud to be the crayon and Clorox wipe fairy.

“I normally budget about $500 a year to different school supply lists for teachers,” said Carlson, who grew up in an economically depressed small town in Iowa but now lives in Kensington in Montgomery County.

She has been using the comfortable income from her writing career and her husband’s federal job to help friends and family who teach back home. But this fall, as her own kids head back to school, things are not so comfortable.

“My grocery bill has increased over 30%,” Carlson said. Her husband, like other Maryland federal employees, worries about possible layoffs. “The job stability isn’t there anymore. We really have to focus on saving money in case something happens.”

So for the first time in a long time, there will be no donation to Iowa. “I can’t afford to do it this year,” she said.

I know how she feels. I always buy from the donation lists for my son’s classrooms, but like so many others, I feel stretched this fall. I resent that the economy, spurred by the choices of the federal government, is forcing me and others to be less charitable to those who need it. It’s a crappy place to be, and for a nation as rich as ours, it’s unconscionable.

My son goes to a Title I school in Baltimore, which gets extra federal funds because a high percentage of its students are from low-income families. As a parent with a stable income, I’ve enjoyed being able to provide in a way that maybe other families can’t. But it’s harder this year. The conundrum is that if we stop giving, it falls on the teachers, who are also humans with their own expenses and who no doubt also feel the strain. If we are pushed to the limit, who will help?

Baltimore City Public Schools did not respond to requests for comment.

“We’re parsing who is allowed to blow their nose,” said Tiffany Holmes, a Baltimore parent who has contributed to wider classroom and school donation lists for years. “It’s absolutely ridiculous for teachers to have to post their wish lists,” she said, because in theory, schools should provide such necessities. “But I consider it a mutual aid thing.”

Even if we feel a shared social responsibility to each other, “there are some people in a tighter squeeze now,” Holmes said. “Everyone has their own breaking point.”

Nakeisha Turner of Pikesville, a former substitute teacher for Baltimore County Public Schools for two years, said her time in the classroom taught her things the public needs to know when considering curtailing those parent donations.

“There are a lot of times where there is a difference in how the teacher will teach something,” depending on whether they have certain supplies, she said. “They ask for dry erase boards, but they get stained, because the kids color on them with permanent marker. And the lifespan of a crayon is about 15 minutes. ... If we don’t [donate], does the teacher not do what they need to because the lesson doesn’t have what they need?”

Turner is concerned about the day supplies run out for kids who don’t have a backup. She said she’s talked to parents who label the supplies for their own children and don’t want other students to use them. “But when a child doesn’t have stuff, or she lost it, what is she supposed to do?”

Exactly. We are the richest country in the world, but we’re feeling the heat at the gas pump, on the job market and at the grocery store. At the same time, the federal government is attempting to shrink its role in the public education system, all while parents are standing in line deciding whether they can afford that second set of markers for someone else’s child. It’s shameful to squeeze people so that those with the least now have to make do with even less, and everyone who used to help has less to give, too.

“The thing that’s especially hard now is seeing your taxes going up, seeing costs rising and schools being underfunded,” Holmes said. “We are disproportionately not funding basic needs that kids have for school.”

Turner said she has seen teachers form their own mutual aid societies, loaning supplies to each other “so that the schools are self-sufficient. They know how to run their classrooms.”

But they shouldn’t have to do all that. “We need to give teachers what they need to do their jobs,” she said.

I got my kid’s basic list, just for him, the weekend before last, taking advantage of the Tax-Free Week promotion in Maryland. But I’m going to do my best to hit the donation list, too. I’m willing to forgo pad thai delivery this week if it provides a pencil for a kid who doesn’t have one.

But it should not be so hard to do.