What It’s Actually Like Parenting A Kid In An Average Underfunded American Public School
I pulled into the parking lot of my son’s middle school last Wednesday at 9:17 a.m., clutching the math workbook he’d left on the kitchen counter. I’m used to running last-minute supplies up to the school these days, ever since he started 7th grade here two years ago. When I pushed open the classroom door, Ms. Lopez, his math teacher, was taping a loose page back into a textbook that had a 2012 copyright date stamped on the inside. There were 28 kids crammed into desks meant for 24, and only 15 textbooks stacked at the front of the room. She smiled and thanked me, quiet enough only I could hear her add that the new workbook order got pushed back another quarter, the district moved supply money to cover the cost of fixing the boiler that broke over winter.
On my way out, I passed the art room, where Ms. Rao was sorting used crayons into empty yogurt cups. They can’t afford new storage bins, so that’s what they use. I grew up in this district, and I can remember when this school had a full band program, a home ec room, a full-time nurse and a full-time counselor. Now the nurse is here three days a week, the counselor only two. The band got cut three years ago, the home ec room is now storage for broken desks no one can afford to replace.
This isn’t one of those hyper-poor, headline-grabbing inner-city schools people talk about on the news. It’s just your average lower-funded public school in a small working-class town in Ohio. The factory that employed 70% of the town closed 12 years ago, property taxes tanked, and the school’s budget has been cut 15% since then. Most people I talk to online say just move to the next district over, where the schools are better. But the median house there is $220,000 more than what I paid for my three-bedroom here. I make a decent living as a dental hygienist, my husband works at the lumber yard, we can’t afford that. Private school is out of the question, we couldn’t cover tuition even if we cut all our other expenses. My son got on the waitlist for the local charter school, never got off. So this is where we are.
A lot of education and parenting content talks about underfunded schools like it’s either an unsolvable systemic crisis or a problem you fix by pulling your kid out. That’s not helpful for people like me, who are staying here, so I’ve figured out a few small, doable things that make day-to-day life better for my kid and his classmates, none of which require a ton of time or money.
The first thing I learned is to ask teachers what they actually need, instead of guessing. Last year for teacher appreciation week, the PTA was collecting gift cards and fancy scented lotions for gift baskets. I texted Ms. Lopez and asked her what she actually runs out of every month that the school doesn’t cover. She said dry erase markers, graph paper, and extra pencils for kids who can’t afford to bring their own. I went to the dollar store, bought a pack of markers, a big pack of graph paper, and 50 pencils, and dropped it off. It cost me $12. That meant more to her than any scented lotion. Now our small parent group chat asks every teacher at the start of the semester what they need, and we split the cost between 10 of us. It’s usually less than $20 a person per semester. No big fundraisers, no silent auctions, just a Venmo request and a run to the store.
The second thing is that small, targeted advocacy matters more than trying to fix everything at once. Most of us work full time, we can’t go to every school board meeting or organize a district-wide protest. Last winter, the district announced they were cutting the after-school bus route to save $78,000 a year. That would have ended after-school art club and the free tutoring program my son goes to, because most of the kids can’t get picked up early. Three of us parents took a Tuesday night off work, went to the meeting, and each shared a two-minute personal story: the single mom who works until 5:30 and can’t leave early to pick up her kid, me talking about how tutoring is the only reason my son’s math grade went from a D to a B. They voted to keep the route, moving the money from the district administrator’s new car budget instead. You don’t have to solve underfunding to stop one bad cut that hurts your kid.
I’ve also had to unlearn the idea that my kid is doomed if he doesn’t have all the fancy opportunities the wealthy district down the road has. That district has a new $10 million STEM wing, a competitive robotics team, a full-time theater program. My kid’s school doesn’t have any of that. But his science teacher started a free after-school bird watching group, because she likes birds and didn’t need any equipment except donated binoculars. My son can now identify 32 different local birds, he keeps a journal of the ones he sees by the soccer field. Last month, he entered a local nature contest and won third place. I never would have guessed that would be his thing, if we had all the fancy STEM programs to distract him. It’s not what I pictured when I was a kid imagining my future kid’s school, but it’s his, and it’s working for him.
Last week, he came home with a colored pencil drawing of the big old oak tree by the school parking lot. The colored pencils were the ones our parent group bought for the art room. It’s hanging on our fridge right now. The portable roof still leaks when it rains hard. The new textbook order still hasn’t come in. We still don’t have a full-time counselor for the kids who need one. Systemic change takes a lot longer than any of us have, when you’re just trying to get your kid through middle school. Right now, this works. We’ll keep showing up, one $12 pack of markers, one school board meeting, one bird walk at a time.
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