The economy is really starting to hit teachers where it hurts: Schools are beginning to ban such innocuous personal items as coffee pots, refrigerators, and microwave ovens from classrooms.
At first glance, such measures appear petty and punitive. It’s not as if a teacher can take a break and walk down to the employee lounge for his or her morning jolt of java.
But there is method to this madness. All these personal appliances use electricity-and it’s not chump change. That’s what officials found out in Volusia County, Fla., where a survey revealed the presence of more than 1,000 such appliances in classrooms. The electricity needed to power all of them was costing the school system an estimated half-a-million dollars annually.
Meanwhile, California’s smaller Glendale Unified School District expects to save $60,000 a year by banning personal appliances from classrooms.
Numerous other districts are banning such classroom appliances, and needless to say, teachers aren’t too happy. Some say they have no time to leave their classroom for the food and refreshments that other professionals take for granted.
“I teach bell to bell, every day,” Pat Rabe, a math teacher at California’s Crescenta Valley High School, told the Los Angeles Times. “And when we don’t have access to these [appliances] immediately, we don’t eat.”
Of course, it’s tough to eat if you get laid off, too. So some teachers are resigned to the budgetary realities of 2009. And others have worked out a pay-as-you-go approach: The Jurupa Unified School District, east of Los Angeles, has agreed to allow classroom appliances next year for a charge, the Times says. What’ll it cost teachers: $40 for refrigerators, $10 for microwaves, and $10 for coffee pots.
That’s still a bargain compared to Starbucks.
Del Stover, Senior Editor
