As the back-to-school season gets underway, a family connected to El Paso County's public schools is raising awareness about a financial reality many educators navigate without public acknowledgment: filling a classroom with basic supplies increasingly comes at a personal cost to the teacher.
The husband of a former educator who spent roughly a decade and a half teaching at a school in the northern part of El Paso County — before eventually moving into an international teaching role — described how her personal spending on classroom materials climbed steadily across her career. He told KOAA News5 that what once felt like a modest, voluntary contribution eventually became something closer to a community expectation. "I think it starts off as there is the time and money that the teachers want to dedicate, and that has morphed into an expectation by the community," he said, adding that there is "a very, very large moat between the reality of what teachers give in their own money and time and what parents think and what parents expect."
The National Education Association puts the typical range of annual out-of-pocket classroom spending by educators at $500 to $900. A separate Adopt a Teacher survey covering the 2024–25 school year arrived at a comparable figure, placing the per-teacher average at $895.
For this particular family, the tab occasionally ran even higher. "There was one year it exceeded over $1,000 that she was buying supplies and replenishing supplies," the husband said. Purchases did not stop at the start of the year; materials ran out or went missing over time, and students sometimes arrived without what they needed. The teacher stepped in repeatedly because, as her husband put it, "the kids would need those basic tools to be able to be present in their education" — and without them, "it's a distraction."
Early in her career, a few hundred dollars per year felt like a manageable personal investment, but over time the dynamic shifted as parents increasingly looked to teachers to cover shortfalls when school budgets fell short. Contributions from parents to classroom funds became less frequent as the years passed, and the family chose to absorb those costs themselves, a decision made possible by their own financial situation.
The husband said community supply drives help ease the financial pressure on both teachers and families. He framed such events as a signal of shared responsibility. In his view, the drives reinforce the idea that a student's access to an education should not hinge on household finances — that "our kids shouldn't be robbed of their education because of dollars... dollars that aren't available."
While he acknowledged that parent organizations sometimes step up to fund classroom materials, he argued the responsibility should not ultimately rest with families: "That shouldn't be incumbent upon the parents. That should be our government system driving that better than we do."
This Saturday, Les Schwab Tire members will join the Back to School Bash to distribute community-donated goods; military and veteran families are invited from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., with the YMCA opening to the broader southeast Colorado Springs community from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Whether the policy concerns the family raised about public funding for classroom supplies will prompt a response from local districts or state officials remains to be seen.