Families: Teachers’ Mart

Josefina Aguilera confronted public education’s sad secret on her first day. “I came into the classroom,” recalls the newly hired kindergarten teacher at 68th Street Elementary School in South Central Los Angeles, “and all I saw were crayons, some books and construction paper.” Aguilera made a list of what was not there: puzzles, art supplies, puppets, records, posters and a bulletin board. Knowing the school could not pay for these items, she went shopping. “I spent about $300,” she estimates. “My husband didn’t know.”

Outfitting a classroom at your own expense is the dirty little secret of the teaching profession. Informal studies suggest that these modestly paid public servants spend $200 to $1,200 annually. “There’s probably not a teacher in America who doesn’t do it,” observes Mattie Tyson, principal of Chicago’s James Weldon Johnson Elementary School.

But the burden may be easing. A coalition of groups backed by the School & Home Office Products Association and World Vision’s Brother to Brother International has begun setting up “free stores” to offer teachers a place to fill their needs without worrying about who pays.

Two outlets, A Gift for Teaching in Orlando, Fla., and Kids ‘N Need in Los Angeles, opened last month. The Kids ‘N Need “resource center,” located in a World Vision warehouse, is colorfully stocked with shelves of notebooks, vats of pencils, writing paper, dictionaries. It mimics a retail center, minus price tags. “Teachers love the concept,” explains SHOPA president Steven Jacober. “A visit seems more like a shopping trip than a charity handout.”

Giving away school supplies in a mock-retail setting is the brainchild of retailer Shannon Carter of Cincinnati, Ohio. Enrolled in a 1995 business-leadership program aimed at generating ideas to improve that city, she heard of a program housed in a Richmond, Va., warehouse called Crayons to Computers and decided “we could take that warehouse and make it fun.” Carter named her free store Crayons to Computers too. “This is not brain surgery,” she observes, “just a giant recycling project.”

That effort was local. But a year later, trustees of SHOPA’s charitable foundation began discussing a national school-supply program. One trustee suggested tapping into World Vision’s Brother to Brother plan, which operates throughout the U.S. Some time later, World Vision’s Robert Odom overheard Chicago school principal Tyson fretting that her students had no pencils for a citywide test. Odom called BTB in Tempe, Ariz., and urged them to start a school-supply program. “We’ve been talking to SHOPA for a year about this,” he was told.

Partly as a result, in 1997 Chicago got the first Kids ‘N Need center. That was a welcome event for Diane Draper, who for 17 years had been supplementing her personal $800-a-year kindergarten shopping budget by raiding Dumpsters in back of office-supply stores. “I’d wait in my car like a private eye to see what got dumped,” Draper recalls. “Then I’d get on my toes and reach in. A couple of times, I almost fell in.” She is delighted with Kids ‘N Need. “If this was done everywhere,” she says, “it would change the educational system.”

Maybe it will. Scott Walters, the SHOPA Foundation’s executive director, plans “a national web of resource centers,” opening at the rate of two, three or four a year, serving well in excess of 100 communities. Each center benefits from history. Chicago’s started as a bulk-delivery warehouse. Then SHOPA retailers toured Crayons to Computers in Cincinnati and liked the mock-retail approach. As a result, Los Angeles opened as a “free store,” Chicago was converted to one, and Crayons to Computers got on SHOPA’s gift list.

Companies donating school supplies get more than warm feelings in return. Most corporations that give merchandise to nonprofit organizations are allowed tax deductions on the donated goods. That is not to say the donors lack heart. Donations in 1997 totaled $3 million; they have jumped to $4 million so far this year. “Many businessmen simply want to help their community,” says Walters. “Getting school supplies to needy kids is a good way to do it.”

Most stores serve schools where at least 70% of the student body is impoverished. Teachers must carry an access card and a shopping list endorsed by their principal. Odom recalls teachers “literally crying,” knowing their kids “would have a notebook for each subject.” At the ribbon cutting in Los Angeles, Monique Allen, 10, of the 68th Street school, says she long suspected one of her teachers had deep pockets because the school “didn’t have the kind of paper she put in my math folder.” Now it does.