How Much Teachers Spend on Their Classrooms in One School Year

It was twenty years ago that the educator expense deduction was set, and today, tax time is always a difficult reminder for teachers across the United States that the deduction itself isn’t quite enough. The educator expense deduction has allowed teachers to deduct up to $250.00 for out-of-pocket classroom expenses since 2002, and the maximum amount has remained the same today.

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One of the major issues lies in that on average each year, teachers are spending an average of $750.00 of their own money for classroom expenses, which is an astounding three times more than they’re able to deduct around tax time. In the United States alone, teachers have spent about $2.8 billion of their own money, for their students, on supplies like pencils, paper, cleaning supplies, books, software and more.

A look at this visualization, found via My eLearning World shows the breakdown of how teachers are spending on their classrooms, with this pie chart broken down into six different areas. The leading area of expense is the non-consumable supplies, which includes books and software.

• Non-consumable supplies (books, software, etc.): 23.6%
• Class decor: 21%
• Consumable supplies (pencils, paper, etc.): 17.4%
• Food & snacks: 14.8%
• Prizes: 14.6%
• Cleaning supplies: 8.6%

Teacher salaries have not been keeping up with inflation either. Since 2015 alone, the spending on classroom supplies for teachers has increased approximately 25%, yet they’re still only able to deduct $250.00 at maximum at tax time. Some have even said that the cost of classroom supplies is $250.00 each month.

Per NPR, it’s reported that about 55% of those who are still teaching as a profession are strongly considering leaving the career behind for something else, much sooner than they had originally planned to. With an estimated 567,000 less teachers than there were prior to the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the shortage of educators in the United States is alarming, but perhaps with good reason.