Eye heart PTA

I read recently that when the owner of the Cleveland Browns bought a house in the city where I work, the median income of the whole city jumped up. Even without him, the city is pretty well off. Not huge mansions everywhere, but everyone seems comfortably well off. My school lets teachers order a bunch of new supplies each year (I missed the ordering, but I get to keep the stuff the previous teacher ordered. Let's just say I will probably never run out of construction paper, staples, or chalk, but the scotch tape situation is dire). There are several small grants available, one from the PTA that is basically guaranteed to each teacher. The PTA also puts on a huge dinner for us each night of conferences. This week was also the Scholastic book fair. Because students and parents spent so much money, I was able to get $100 worth of free books (One of my students very kindly bought me a gift certificate, so I got $110 worth. My favorite book purchase? Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Poop. How can you not buy a book with the word poop in the title?). I pass out the Scholastic fliers each month, and my kids always buy stuff. Every dollar they spend gets me bonus points that I can use to buy more books. Before I started teaching I was so proud of myself for starting my book collection while still a student. That stash seemed much smaller out of the boxes, and up on the bookshelf. I've probably doubled my amount since then, and many of them were free. Which is good, because some of them have already wandered off the shelves, never to return. I don't have the bigger items, like laptops for each student, or a computer project or smartboard, but on little stuff, I do pretty well.