Our schools are generally underfunded and hardly anyone with any real power gives two shits.

Conservatives, mostly.

Conservatives believe in neither education nor government. It's no surprise that when they have power, they fuck up both of those things.

Also racism. A common facet of conservatism. It's part of why conservatives don't like public programs- the wrong sort of people might benefit.

Education is way undervalued. Teacher pay is horrible and the schools don't have enough funding for the number of students. So years ago they started putting more and more of the obligation on the parents (and, actually, on the teachers) to supply their own materials.

Because education in the US is a fucking joke, just like everything else in this shithole country.

Edid: sorry i was in a shitty mood earlier lol

Many people here are talking about under-funding of education in the US. If you look at expenditure per student vs GDP per capita, the US is actually doing fairly well when compared to the rest of the world. Our problems aren't funding related (though I wouldn't argue against more funding). Our problems are allocation and priority related.

See here for data: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country

Because schools are underfunded as shit, thanks GOP, and not only do teachers spend a ton of their own time and money just to be underpaid, they’re not given adequate supplies for students. It’s especially bad for low income families that can’t afford to also pony up for supplies and activities.

Schools are sabotaged. They underfund the actual school so they can't afford common supplies like this, or repair their AC or building upkeep, etc. They vastly underpay teachers so there are fewer of them, increasing workload per teacher so there's more burnout and less effective teaching. They make wedge issues like the book bans, sex ed and anti-trans bills that prevent teachers teaching the obvious reality in order to increase anger at teachers to burn more out. They pass bills that allow people to take their taxes out of schools to move to other schools in richer areas or to keep if they homeschool (to indoctrinate).

They are the US republicans and the purpose of this is to ensure the most amount of poorer people are uneducated, don't get a chance to get higher education. Which leads to ensuring fewer have well-paying jobs, and more people live desperately and can't quit their jobs, move or exercise their right to assembly. This ensures a life-long near-slave caste of workers so billionaires have cheap labor and who are easily manipulated emotionally through fear keeping Republicans in power.

Because Jeff Bezos would rather buy a few more yachts.

It wasn't always the case. Back when I was a kid, the school provided most things. Textbooks, crayons, paper, scissors, glue, etc. I had to bring myself, a pencil and eraser, and a notebook.

Somewhere along the line they figured out they could be pocketing that money instead of spending it on the kids, let the parents deal with the expenditures. Now you've got superintendents with quarter of a million dollar salary, over-budgeted construction projects that aren't always necessary (and they arent allowed to reallocate those funds elsewhere, so they just construct more bullshit), and they still find the time to screw over the teachers (who are making as much as a highly paid retail employee).

In Australia, for a public school student, the school provides a list of pencils, pens, glue etc the child will need for the year. You can choose to buy it from wherever but there are school suppliers that will provide everything in a pack for a fee and deliver it to your door.

There is no expectation that the teacher would pay for anything out of their pocket.

Basically it is a way to provide unfair education. By forcing the student's parents to pay for as much as possible you are ensuring that only wealthy neighborhoods get good education.

I'm in the US and we just provide a small fee and they provide the supplies. US every state and county is different.

Because Americans don’t want to pay taxes. A great majority think these things just magically appear, or that if you can’t afford it you don’t deserve it. “Socialism” is a dirty word in some circles and “the cruelty is the point” is their motto.

In italy we bought everything outselves including books. Teachers never paid for anything.

They are over qualified and underpaid. They are also underappreciated with who it matters, those that pay them.

They need to supply their ideas because they do it because they care. They have my upmost respect. Them and health care professionals work their asses off. At least with healthcare, they have decent paycheck.

Bait post so it fits right in here

In Australia, we get a stationery list at the beginning of each year. So many pens, pencils, a set of coloured pencils, this many lined exercise books, a ruler, erasers, an art book, a set of watercolour paint, etc. in some grades the kids (parents) leave these at home and the kid brings what they require when they run out. Other grades, the teacher takes them all and locks them in a cabinet, gives them out when required.

Some schools buy 47 (whatever) copies of Romeo and Juliet, Chemistry 1, To kill a mockingbird, Algebra and Geometry, etc, and loan them to the kids at the start of the year. You break it, you buy it. Other schools get you to buy your own books (they tell you which version of which books, and there are commercial bookstores that sell specifically to the school market), but have a school bookshop so you can sell it back at the end of the year, and buy next year’s books secondhand which another family sold. (Or buy new from bookstores mentioned above if there are no secondhand books available at the school bookstore).

The teachers still have to buy their own equipment: chalk, whiteboard markers, pens and pencils, but the stuff they buy is for their use. Some schools have laptops and smart whiteboards; these are provided by the school.

(My kids only went to public schools, I don’t know how private schools work).

Basically like most said, schools are woefully underfunded. Most often, they are mostly funded at the local level which screws them. Poor places have less money for school, thus making the cycle of poverty harder to break out of. Rich places have loads of money so intergenerational wealth persists. Medium income tend to fight any tax increase. (And if education matters to you, better to fight a tax increase and just send your kid to a private one)

Funding for schools here vary from state to state, but while there may be some amount of funding provided by the State and Federal government, most of the budget comes from the local governments, through property taxes. Where I live, school budgets are proposed by the school board but have to be voted on in the district that is being taxed.

There are a large number of people who are against all property taxes and reflexively vote down any increases. To be fair, those increases can be hard on retirees or other people on fixed incomes; even those whose houses are paid off would have to pay the tax. But districts with a lot of families tend to vote those budgets through, particularly if the overall tax per family is much less than the cost of private school.

I've lived here for 25 years, and my mortgage is almost paid off. But what I pay in all property taxes (not just School Taxes) is almost 2/3 of my monthly mortgage payment. When the kids are out of school, we'll probably move somewhere cheaper.

and then proceed to not even use them

shopping list: 3 notebooks actually ends up using a quarter of one

My partner is a teacher and we spend around $200 a month just on snacks for their classroom (snacks have to be individually packaged, and there's 36 kids per class, so that's 72 snacks a day, Because the kids have a morning snack and an afternoon snack.) Even with donors, choose PTA and other groups. We just know that there's a certain amount of our income each month that's going to go too supporting her classroom. It sucks but we have accepted it, because by us not doing that the kids are just going to suffer.

What is "basic school supplies" for you? In Europe, there is a list of basic supplies students need and the displays show up in stores around July: things like pencils, pens, erasers, paper, binders, folders, punches, staplers/staples, paper clips, correction fluid... There's a lot