Teacher's $ For School Supplies Tight

Last week, Governor Sonny Perdue announced that all school districts would have to make teachers take three furlough days, days without pay.

DeKalb County's board of education decided to eliminate payments to retirement savings to avoid furloughs. Cobb County schools will use money from reserve funds so they won't have to furlough teachers.

As for Chatham County, it's not a matter of if, but when. We're told teachers will take three furloughs on teacher work days so it doesn't affect students. Administrators will also have un-paid days off.

Governor Perdue also announced a 3% cut to education across the state.

To give it some perspective, that means a $4 million cut here in Chatham County.

Today, News 3 education reporter, Randi Hempel, shows us how the tough economic times and cuts are hurting teachers and school supply stores.

School supplies are still essential. In the past few weeks, Barnett's Educational Supplies has been busier, but sales have changed. Teachers are coming in and buying the basics for their classrooms, not the fun stuff.

"You go to the grocery store and you buy milk, bread and eggs. When you come to the teacher supply store, you buy number lines, alphabets and reproducable books,” explains Sally Blaine, store manager at Barnett’s.

Blaine says teachers have always spent money out of their own pockets for school supplies but in the last few years, they've been spending more with the hundred dollar Visa gift cards from Governor Sonny Perdue. This year, though, those gift cards are no longer, so, instead of teachers spending $175 for supplies, they're now only spending about $75.

"That will be a huge loss both to the teachers and to stores such as ours as far as sales volume. It will be drastically cut. But, we've planned for that. We know that it's not going to happen and the teachers will be spending from their own pockets," continues Blaine.

“That does not lessen what we have to buy. We find creative ways to implement other things that we can use where we don't have to buy as many supplies and I'm noticing that a lot of the stores like Barnett's do work with the teachers and they're very helpful any way that they can give us a discount or we can buy in bulk,” says Erica Ross, a 4th grade teacher at Gadsden Elementary.

“We'd like to see the whole economy turn around and we wouldn't be having this conversation at this time next year, but I think it’s gonna take a little bit longer than that,” adds Blaine.

Some teachers tell me they'll cut their spending elsewhere because they need supplies for their classes.

Barnett's will be opening for half days on Sundays during August in hopes of helping business. Their hours will be 1 p.m. – 5 p.m.