Teachers buying supplies for themselves

Meriden (WTNH) - Back-to-school means learning some lessons in frugality. With budget cuts statewide many Connecticut school districts are looking to students and teachers for help.

After 8 years as a Science teacher, Jennifer Carrano is now being forced to teach Math because of budget cuts in Bridgeport.

"We lost five teachers out of our school this year so I'm pretty happy to just have a job," the 6th grade teacher said.

On the day News Channel 8 talked with her she was at Education Works, a school supply store in Orange, spending her own money buying books to supplement the curriculum and some extras to keep the kids interested.

"I have to buy clay," Carrano said. "I do all kinds of different thing. It gets costly."

She estimates spending between two and five thousand dollars a year out of her own pocket.

"For as long as I have been doing this it's been teachers spending their own money," said Timothy Desmond, owner of Education Works.

Desmond said this year with the poor economy even teachers are cutting back, buying a few things with their own money and finding a lot of financial help online.

Carrano gets financial help through a site called Donor's Choose.

"Donor's Choose is a web site where you can put in a grant proposal," Carrano explained. "Prospective people can give you money if they like your program."

The awards range from fifty dollars to thousands. Bridgeport Kindergarten teacher Sarah Richard also uses it. "It takes some time and research, but there are things out there," she said.

Like the $250 federal tax credit for teachers.

"We'll take anything we can get," Richard said.

For Jennifer Carrano it's simple. "If you want to have a classroom where the kids are having a great time, they're learning, the more stimulation you give them the more activities you can give them the better off you are as a teacher and the more they learn."

For more information:
www.educationworks.com
www.donorschoose.com
www.myteacherdollars.com