Teachers spend $895/year of their own money on classroom supplies — up 49% since 2015 — and the $250 federal tax deduction covers less than 28% of what they actually spend

In the 2024-25 school year, public school teachers spent an average of $895 out of pocket on classroom supplies, according to AdoptAClassroom.org's annual survey. The median supply budget provided by their school was $200, and 97% of teachers said it was not enough. Teachers buy paper, pencils, markers (82%), food for hungry students (66%), and books (64%). This spending has increased 49% since 2015, and with tariffs expected to push school supply prices up another 12-15% in 2025-26, the trend is accelerating. So what? At $895/year, a teacher earning $45,000 is spending 2% of their gross salary subsidizing their employer's supply budget. Over a 30-year career, that is $26,850 in uninflated dollars — real money spent on items that any other employer would provide. The federal educator expense deduction caps at $250, covering barely 28% of actual spending. The remaining $645 comes directly from the teacher's take-home pay. For a teacher already earning 27% less than comparable professionals, this is not a minor inconvenience — it is an implicit pay cut on top of an explicit one. The structural cause is chronic underfunding of per-pupil instructional supply budgets. When school boards face budget shortfalls, discretionary supply lines are the first to be cut because they do not trigger legal obligations the way staffing ratios or special education mandates do. The result is a quiet cost-shifting from the institution to the individual. Teachers absorb it because the alternative — telling a student they cannot have a pencil — feels unconscionable. This dynamic persists because it is invisible: no line item in any district budget says 'teacher personal subsidies,' so the cost never appears in budget debates.