How a Ky. teacher deals with rising costs for school supplies amid inflation issues

The impact of rising inflation is wide ranging and has not glossed over K-12 teachers, several of whom are tasked with funding their own classroom supplies and materials.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the consumer price index, which is a broad measure of the cost of goods in the United States, jumped 9.1% in the past year. That’s reported to be the highest annual increase in 40 years.

Susannah Treese, 32, teaches fifth grade at Robertson County School and is not immune to these expenses. She said inflation has impacted the price of gas to and from work, classroom materials and aspects of her personal life as well.

Treese lives in Lexington but commutes a little over an hour to work at the school, which is located in Mount Olivet.

The drive back takes around an hour and a half because of traffic, making gas a substantial factor in her living expenses.

“Gas has been a humongous factor in the struggles with inflation for my family,” Treese said.

Treese said that while driving a Toyota Prius “helps lighten the load a little bit,” her car doesn’t have a big gas tank, causing her to spend in total between $60 to $80 to fill up for her two weekly trips.

As of Friday, the national average price for regular fuel is $4.41 compared to a year ago when the average was $3.15, according to the AAA.

How much it costs for schools, teachers to provide supplies

Treese said she usually spends more than $200 paying for classroom materials such as book sets, pencils, headphones and earbuds, markers and more.

Treese said she works in a low income school district where “many” of the kids are hungry and depend on school for their only reliable meals. She said she keeps a supply of snacks to keep in her class for those in need.

“On the weekends, our resource center typically takes care of those kids by sending home, like, a bag (of food) with them, but our school incurs costs to send these bags of food home, so I can only imagine that (inflation is) really impacting us at that level as well,” she said.

She said she has been fortunate the last couple of years, as her school helps with classroom supplies through a class-funded account.

She estimated an average classroom account to hold between $100 and $200. The money comes from annual fundraising events. Treese said the coronavirus pandemic has impacted her school’s ability to do fundraising activities for the past few years, causing the budget to be tight.

She said she’s nervous to see what the total cost of her school supplies and classroom materials will be this year with the rising costs.

“I would anticipate that even if I can get a lot of it paid for through my class funded account, I’m still probably going to be out of pocket at least what I usually am if not $100 to $150 more,” she said.

The fifth-grade teacher said she usually changes her classroom theme each year but won’t be able to do so this year because of the expense.

“We just don’t really have that extra money this year,” she said.

She said she can’t predict some years what she’ll need and is constantly modifying and adding to the list of materials.

“I could have a bill that’s around what I normally do just because my schools offer the help, but I am somehow doubting that it’s not going to cost me more money in the long run, especially while inflation’s this bad,” she said.

How inflation affects a teacher’s family

Treese’s family hasn’t been spared when it comes to inflation’s increase on groceries. She said the cost of groceries is “absolutely astronomical” for herself, her fiance and her two-year-old daughter.

“We went from, you know, our basic grocery list costing us anywhere from $100 to $150 to now it’s $200 to $250 easily for just one grocery trip,” she said. “And it seems like we have to make those grocery trips a lot more often because we’ve got a growing child who is eating all the time and snacking all the time.”

Treese, who is originally from Pennsylvania, said the increase in inflation has impacted her and her fiance’s ability to take their daughter to visit family.

Her parents have to travel to Kentucky to see their granddaughter because she and her fiance can’t afford the cost of gas to travel to Pennsylvania on top of their monthly bills.

“I’m a teacher; I have my summers off. I’d like to go places with my family, but when it costs x amount extra just to drive there, it becomes near impossible to do anything besides local stuff,” Treese said.

She said despite its challenges, any thoughts of leaving teaching due to its expenses have been “fleeting,” as the career allowed her to start a family and transition from working “crazy hours” in retail management.

“Teaching has really provided me the opportunity to live that dream and have my family,” she said. “I love it. I’ve never felt more called to anything in my life.”

She said she wants people to know the past two years have been “impossibly difficult” as teachers work to help kids catch up on social and academic development they may have missed due to spending years at home during COVID-19’s onset.

“Rally around the teachers that you love,” Treese said. “They are going to need all the support they can get and then some over the next several years while we attempt to catch these kids back up from how far behind they got during COVID.”

She said teaching is an underfunded, under-respected and underappreciated profession, which adds to the job’s difficulty.

Treese said teachers want parents to be open communicators with them regarding positive or negative feedback and not resort to bashing them on social media or to news organizations when issues occur.

“I always say that parents are their teacher’s partner with their child’s education, meaning it is not all the teacher (and) it is not all the parents,” Treese said. “We have to be partners in this for their child to be as successful as they can be.”

Some help teachers through wish lists

Treese said purchasing an item off a teacher’s Amazon wish list is one way people can help teachers. She said many teachers, including herself, fill their lists with items they’d like to purchase for their classroom like instructional books, classroom decorations and more.

“It doesn’t matter who it is. It could be your child’s teacher, it could be somebody you know, a friend of yours. It could be somebody in a different state,” she said. “We just need support.”

Treese’s wish list includes tissues, plastic storage bins, pocket charts and more.

Amazon wish lists are commonly used by teachers as a way to get help providing supplies to their students through online shopping. Some have gotten help from celebrities and social media to clear out their wish list and provide those items. Kristen Bell has used Instagram to promote teachers’ wish lists in the past, encouraging her followers to help each teacher with supplies.

Chrissy Teigen previously found teachers’ wish lists via Twitter and bought the teachers all the items they wanted.