this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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What the fuck is it with schools being stingy with printed paper. At scale its less than a cent a sheet
So many donations and funds for schools are earmarked, you can only spend them in specific ways. If you spend them in ways that don't align with the earmark, it's incredibly easy for the donors or the state to claw them back. So that $40mil your local suburban school district spent on a new football stadium? That was likely earmarked SPECIFICALLY for football, they can't really just swish the money to better textbooks, or whatever. Same with tech funding - you get $250k to upgrade your school district with Chromebooks or whatever, you MUST buy within what the funding packet tells you you can buy, and you can't really do anything else with it.
That doesn't even get into the cartelization of textbooks and school software. There's so few real options that it's incredibly easy for these companies to collude without really looking like it's collusion.
They also have to be paying for the software that tracks how many prints you use. It’s fucking stupid, and it’s just one of a million little ways that they make sure to punish anyone stupid enough to teach.
I ended up buying my own printer. Printing alone got me to the maximum $300 of classroom expenses I was allowed to write off on taxes.
Unfortunately not only a problem in schools. Where I work at there's already a pay per use system that bills the department, with an entire system with separate codes to identify where you belong financially. Now they're debating adding a fee for the ability to print.
So you save 100 in taxes and pay 500 in printing costs... You're down 400 for supplying your employer. Lol
They’re pretty obviously supplying it for their students, not their employer. Weird as hell to rub someone’s nose in the fact their students are trapped in a school system that doesn’t even supply teachers with proper access to printed materials. Even Reddit used to run a donor program to help teachers out with the costs.
The way I read their comment was pointing out that the employer (the school district) should be providing sufficient printing. :shrug: But there's many ways to interpret, I suppose
It's like tipping... It happens because we let it. It's so incredibly common that literally poor teachers are paying for basic supplies the school doesn't when they should look those kids in the eyes and tell them they are sorry and that their society and school have failed them and to go home and tell their parents to vote differently.
Sure, you can do that once. Then you are out the job. Talking about politics will get you in more trouble than raping a kid.
I went into teaching because I care about making the world a better place. It cost me my marriage, it has sunk me into some of the deepest pits of despair that my mental health could take, it has meant physical and verbal abuse.
Buying pencils for kids is the kind of thing that you don’t mind too much, because at least it is a problem you can fix.
Once, I had a student ask me for a pencil. (He’d ask me everyday - usually in response to me asking why he wasn’t doing his work.) He looked me in the eye, snapped it in half, and asked for another.
I gave it to him. Who cares. I couldn’t fix the sinks which didn’t work and stunk because kids shoved shit into them, but I could fix the fucking pencil.
It’s a terrible job where you are expected to save the world and hated for everything you do. But, as a dog returns to his vomit... It’s part of my soul.
Anyone that would say that to a student who turned up to learn has no business teaching. You don’t take funding problems out on students. It’s not the teacher’s obligation to self fund their classroom, but many do it because often nobody else is. Reading someone talk about that and the message you decide is important to share with them is ‘lol you’re paying your employer’ is weirdo behavior.
They get indoctrinated with all kinds of other bullshit. They can take some truth home.
Also spent several hundred just on vinegar and baking soda for labs.
But yeah, I actually had to quit teaching after my divorce because I could no longer afford to do it!
Teachers where I live are constantly asking for donations of basic school supplies, snacks, tissues, and cleaning supplies for classrooms. It is incredibly disheartening.
Execs know teachers are doing it because of internal drive to teach and not for the pay and they take advantage of it in absolutely every way they can.
If teachers want useful posters on the wall, gotta pay for it. If teachers want students to not have to share a worksheet 3:1, teachers will pay for it. It's incredible not only how much they do for free, but how much they pay out of pocket for the "privilege"
Yeah. The system in the US works on exploiting, crushing, and discarding young teachers. Almost none of the other teachers I met while teaching are still in the profession. You are expected to martyr yourself for the job - I usually didn’t get to eat lunch, because I was busy. I stopped drinking water, because I ended up pissing myself one day when I couldn’t get to the restroom.