Teachers have long pulled from their own pockets to pay for classroom supplies. Now, rising inflation and widening student needs have made that more expensive.
“At this point, the school has pretty much said they can’t pay for anything, which has been pretty shocking,” said Dominique Foster, a 20-year veteran early childhood specialist at Friendship Public Charter School’s Blow Pierce campus in the District of Columbia. “[Administrators] just don’t know how much money there will be, so they’re trying to stretch it. If you want to do anything, they might say you can do it, but you better pay for it yourself.”
In a survey released by the crowdsourcing platform DonorsChoose April. 28, teachers reported spending on average $655 of their own money for their students this school year, up $45 from the 2023-24 school year. They sought more than twice that in outside money to meet basic classroom needs.
DonorsChoose is the largest education crowdfunding platform in the United States, with teachers in about 9 in 10 school districts nationwide requesting aid through the site. In March, the group surveyed more than 2,500 K-12 teachers nationwide who use the site about their experiences and priorities in the 2024-25 school year. The group also analyzed data from the crowdfunding requests of more than 7,000 teachers who work in schools with a majority of students from low-income families and a majority of students who are Black, Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander, or multiracial.
The sample was representative of the teachers who crowdfund, which prior studies find are more likely to come from low-income schools and states that provide the least per-pupil funding. The survey may not be fully representative of teachers—it relied on teachers who use the platform—but their spending is in line with other teacher surveys, which have noted rising out-of-pocket costs for teachers since the pandemic.
“Materials are becoming harder to purchase on our own with the inflation,” one Texas high school teacher who took the DonorsChoose survey said. “My paycheck has not gone up, but supplies and things I need for my students have increased.”
In fact, nearly half of teachers who took the survey also reported taking a second job—from education-related ones like tutoring and coaching to other gigs, like bartending and retail—to make ends meet.
Foster has paid some $5,000 out-of-pocket this year, as budgets tightened for her school and her mostly low-income families alike.
“I don’t ask the parents for snacks anymore, because groceries are crazy, so I pretty much buy most of the snacks,” Foster said. “We’re spending $15 here, $20 here. … And I like really nice activities in the classroom, so I’m willing to spend my own money. … It adds up.”
Crowdfunding demands for students’ basic needs multiply, too
Teachers also increasingly seek support from crowdfunding sites to help cover more than just academic tools and classroom goodies. DonorsChoose found the number of requests for classroom support related to basic student needs—food, clothing, and hygiene—has more than tripled, from just over 13,800 in 2020-21 to more than 47,800 this school year.
Students’ mental health—particularly in high school—also remains a top concern for teachers, with nearly 7 in 10 reporting that they need more professional staff, training, and class resources to support students struggling with mental or emotional issues.
“I see firsthand how much students are struggling and how important it is for them to have a safe, supportive space to process their challenges,” one Colorado middle school teacher said as part of the survey. “The need for more mental health resources, staffing, and accessible interventions is greater than ever.”
Requests for classroom furniture, like flexible seating, have also more than doubled since 2020, from about 15,500 to nearly 40,300 this year, and crowdsourcing proposals for art supplies nearly doubled, from more than 16,100 to just over 30,000 in the last five years.
“Teaching has always been a tough job to do in terms of literally taking care of all the responsibilities, especially given the resources,” said Alix Guerrier, the chief executive officer of DonorsChoose. “But definitely since 2020, there was this incredible step change in the responsibilities that teachers have, and that step change has been lasting.”
In tight budget years, Foster said she and her colleagues have been advised to lean on crowdfunding for things the school can’t afford. But relying on crowdfunding sites can exacerbate funding inequities.
Studies find, for example, that while most crowdfunding requests focus on core subject areas like mathematics and language arts, those projects are less likely to be supported compared to arts, financial literacy, or other less common subjects. Foster agreed, noting that crowdfunding requests for a fun class project, such as analyzing model skeletons, or those with catchy titles, tend to be more successful than workaday requests. She and her colleagues work together to plan project requests.
Not all teachers have that luxury; some districts have moved to ban crowdsourcing, saying there aren’t adequate controls on the materials teachers purchase and that the practice makes it harder to track overall school funding.
While districts and other groups have come under pressure to remove materials related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, more than 8 in 10 teachers—and nearly 9 in 10 teachers at low-income schools that serve a majority of students of color—said it was important or very important for their classroom materials to reflect their students’ identities.
Guerrier said teachers are also seeking more help to introduce their students to new career fields.
“We actually do see evidence even in elementary that teachers are thinking about this, that they’re aware of the changes [in career education], they’re aware of the public discourse,” he said.
