An
Editorial Series
April 4, 2002
Sarah McClure can’t get enough books. She also can’t
get enough computers and software and school supplies and teachers
and teaching assistants. Don’t get her wrong. The 700 students
at Alexandria Elementary School do have a lot compared to other schools
in the state. She thanks the parents for that. But candy sales, fall
festivals and donated labor can’t cover all of the school’s
needs. Only constitutional reform can do that.
It will take radical change for the state to improve
its shoddy financing of public education. Mrs. McClure admits she
does not know all the ins and outs of constitutional reform except
that “It’s needed.”
“The children of Alabama deserve to have a quality
education,” she says bluntly. The teachers are dedicated, as
are the parents and the PTO. They have lent their time and energy
to building a gym for the school, but there are needs even the most
dedicated parents and teachers cannot meet. “There is a way for
things to be funded differently,” she says. Until such a change
occurs, she only has charity and a long wish list. It grows lengthy
when Mrs. McClure is asked what she would do with a little more money.
The mere idea of it removes her from the day-to-day reality
of running Alexandria Elementary School, a brown brick building sitting
in a field, smack in the center of Calhoun County. Mrs. McClure would
rebuild the playground because it remains water logged for days after
a rainstorm. The library needs more books as it has a monthly circulation
of 11,000 and a collection of only 20,000. The school also could use
a science laboratory.
There’s also the Saxon Math program. It’s been
shown to raise student’s standardized achievement test scores
from the low 70s to the low 90s. She did buy the materials for some
grades but they had to pay for it with fundraisers. The teachers wanted
it so badly, she leveraged the purchase on future candy sales to replenish
the budget. The candy sales came through, but they could never pay
for teachers’aides. Mrs. McClure would like one in every room
for students who need individual attention.
She also would like an art teacher, a music teacher,
a foreign language teacher and another gym teacher. A
kindergarten teacher used to teach music to other classes while her
own students had naptime but not any longer.
Anyway, she says, “We shouldn’t have to ask
a teacher to do that.” Mrs. McClure also doesn’t feel that
parents should have to pay for their children to attend the school’s
summer reading program. In fact, she would keep the library open later
so families could use the Internet and get books, instead of waiting
for the weekly visit from the bookmobile. Did she mention more books?
Each classroom could use around 300 books, and a computer. “If
we were funded the way we should, we wouldn’t have to be doing
all these fundraisers,” Mrs. McClure says.
When she was a student and a young teacher, she didn’t
have these concerns. Mrs. McClure, an Army brat,
attended Department of Defense schools and taught at them during her
husband’s tour of service. Those schools wanted for nothing.
“Everything was supplied,” she says. “It was an ideal
setting.” That’s a far cry from Alabama where the state
consistently ranks 48th in per-pupil spending and a reliance on sales
taxes puts the educational system on a bucking bronco of a budget
tied to a whipsaw economy.
While large landowners and agribusiness shrink away from
paying property taxes, teachers such as Darlene House of Alexandria
often fork over their own cash for necessities such as books, photocopies
and cleaning supplies. The state allots only $525 to each teacher
annually for supplies. That figure has remained virtually unchanged
since it was set at $500 in 1980. It has never been adjusted for inflation.
The teachers at Alexandria Elementary School will freely tell you
that, in addition to $525, they spend $500, $1,000 or $1,500 a year.
It’s not a complaint but a simple fact. And it reminds
Mrs. McClure of something else she would like — $1,500 to $2,000
annually per teacher for supplies. She can show you the effects of
a little extra cash with a quick tour through the school. Ms. House
has stocked her room with books and materials that she has collected
over her years teaching. Yet she still spent $1,300 this year —
in addition to her $525 allotment.
“You have to be able to be resourceful, to find
other resources and to use our own money if you must,” she says
matter-of-factly. And she’s not going to deprive her kids of
books, especially when they are excited about taking them home and
reading. They devour her class library, everything from The Little
House on the Prairie to Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked
Wedgie Woman, the current favorite. Every class does not have such
a variety.
Down the hall, Mrs. McClure pokes her head into another
room. There is a small plastic basket of books. “She’s a
young teacher, and she has two little children herself so she can’t
spend as much on materials,” Mrs. McClure says. Kindergarten
teacher Cherie Prickett knew she would be a teacher so she started
collecting books in college. In the past two years, the young teacher
has spent more than $4,000 for books. (She also has paid to get her
master’s degree and to take the national board exam.) But the
books make her classroom lively.
The kindergartners are reading already. As the kids wait
to go to lunch, some sit quietly at their desks,poring over the pages
while others mill around the shelves. She’ll always let them
take the books home — the books on which she has spent so much
of her own money. “They’ll just sit here otherwise,”
Ms.
Cricket says. “Of course, the brothers and sisters tear them
up, they spill things, you know.” She always needs to replace
them, to repair them, to update them. That’s the way things go.
She’s not going to slow a child’s enthusiasm for reading
for the sake of physically saving a book. There’s always Scotch
tape.
In the hallway by the janitor’s closet is a floor
stripper that cost the school $10,000. It’s broken. It’s
also another unexpected expense that can drain the school’s general
fund and leads into a discussion on the cost of keeping up the school
grounds. She has to dip into the general fund, and all its profits
from candy sales, for that as well. “We’re not raising money
to make a big bank account. We’re raising money to put it back
in the classrooms to help the kids,” Mrs. McClure says.
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