By Sarah Nagem
snagem@salisburypost.com
As a young elementary school teacher still in graduate school, Leigh Marcischak is excited about being an educator.
The 24-year-old likes to reward the students in her fifth-grade class at Granite Quarry Elementary with prizes like stuffed animals and stickers.
And she needs the less exciting stuff, too: markers for her dry erase board, notebooks and glue sticks.
When schools can’t provide all the materials classrooms want ó or need, many teachers spend their own money for supplies.
Marcischak, who is in her second year of teaching, said she spent up to $100 a month last school year. She bought pretty much anything that has to do with Hannah Montana at the dollar stores and Wal-Mart.
For many, being a teacher isn’t cheap.
Often, students’ families donate items for classrooms. But the current economic slump has Marcischak worried families won’t be able to pitch in as much as usual.
“I bought more this year, knowing with the economy the way it is, some parents are reluctant to buy supplies, or unable to buy supplies,” she said.
So Educators’ Express might have come just in time. Rowan Partners for Education opened the free teachers’ store in a mobile unit at East Rowan High School on Sept. 2.
Office Depot, local churches and individuals donated school supplies to the store, where teachers can stock up for their classrooms.
The shelves in the mobile unit are stocked with cases of notebook paper, sticky notes, markers and anything else you could think of a teacher needing.
Earlier this month, Marcischak left Educators’ Express with a plastic tub filled with supplies.
Rowan Partners for Education modeled the store concept from Classroom Central, a program in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that allows teachers to shop for free for classroom items.
By the first of October, almost 80 teachers had signed up to shop at Educators’ Express, said Louise Wooten, executive director of Rowan Partners for Education.
For now, Wooten said, teachers are limited to one of each item. They can grab a few notebooks, she said.
Teachers can shop at the store three times a year ó in the fall, winter and spring.
Wooten hopes the program can become a recruiting tool for the Rowan-Salisbury School System. New teachers often spend their own money for supplies before they get their first paycheck, Wooten said.
Her organization wanted to open the store as a way to thank teachers for their hard work, she said.
“We really wanted to let them know they’re appreciated,” Wooten said.
During a recent trip to Educators’ Express, Shive Elementary teachers Frances Justus and Angie Lovingood were appreciative for the free supplies.
Lovingood, a first-year teacher, said she doesn’t have many materials to stock her fourth-grade classroom.
“I don’t have a lot of stuff,” she said.
“I do have a lot of stuff,” explained Justus, who has been teaching for 20 years. “But it’s consumed every year. It needs to be replenished every year.”
Justus estimated that she spends $300 to $400 of her own money each year for classroom materials.
She recalled a recent scenario that made her realize how fast those materials get used. “They were playing restaurant and taking orders,” Justus said of her kindergarten students. “They ate up two notepads. … But they were using it in a useful way. They were learning.”
Learning, after all, is what it’s all about. Lovingood grabbed a deck of cards at Educators’ Express to use when she teaches her students multiplication tables. Those extras bring lessons to life, Justus said. Students can use candy to learn to graph numbers.
“You could pencil and paper that all day,” she said. “But if you have M&M’s and they can eat them afterwards, they’re going to remember that.”
And Justus said it’s unfair to continually ask parents to buy items.
“You don’t want to nickel and dime the parents to death,” she said. “It adds up.”
But teachers feel the strain of a sluggish economy just like everyone else.
Each year, the Rowan County Board of Commissioner gives the school system $375,000 for teachers’ supplies.
This year, each teacher, guidance counselor and media specialist is getting $236.14 to spend on classroom materials, said Tara Trexler, chief financial officer for the school system.
If teachers and school employees don’t take advantage of the money, the funds go back to the county, Trexler said.
Last school year, almost 91 percent of employees who qualified for the money used it, she said. By mid-January, about 86 percent of the funds had been spent.
Marcischak said she already spent her money from the county. She bought materials to decorate her bulletin board and education supplements like newspapers.
Justus and Lovingood said they use the money from the county, too.
But when teachers can’t make that money stretch throughout the school year, Wooten hopes they will visit Educators’ Express.
Donations play a huge role, though. Liz Tennent, committee chairwoman for Educators’ Express, said some items are in high demand: transparent sheets for overhead projectors, sheet protectors for notebooks, big Ziploc bags, colored card stock and dry-erase board cleaner.
To donate supplies, contact Wooten at 704-642-0700 or at lwooten@educaterowan.org.