What It’s Really Like At An Underfunded Public School In America: A Parent’s Perspective
The hallway outside my 4th grader’s classroom smelled like old floor wax and burnt microwave popcorn when I showed up for fall parent-teacher conferences last year. The thermostat on the wall said 61 degrees, so I zipped my fleece all the way up, stepping over a tear in the linoleum that had been there since my son Milo started kindergarten. Ms. Lopez, his teacher, waved me into a wobbly folding chair propped against her desk, which was stacked high with composition notebooks, most with scuffed covers held together with packing tape.
She pulled out Milo’s reading assessment and got straight to the point: he’s a little below grade level, and it’s not for lack of effort. We only have 14 leveled readers for 27 kids, she explained. Half the time they have to share during class, and we can’t send books home for practice because there aren’t enough to go around. I bought 10 used ones at the thrift store over the summer, that’s what Milo uses for at-home practice. I left the conference with that line stuck in my head: a teacher buying books for her class out of her own pocket, just so kids can practice reading.
I went straight from the conference to the monthly PTA meeting that night. The principal stood at the front of the cafeteria, leaning against a folding table, and told us the district had cut our school’s budget by 8% that year. Property tax revenue in our low-income neighborhood came in lower than projected, so the district was reallocating more money to wealthier schools in the northern part of the district. That meant we wouldn’t fill the open custodian position, and we were cutting the part-time art teacher spot entirely. When a mom asked what that meant for our kids, the principal just shrugged and said classes would get art once a month from a rotating parent volunteer instead of weekly.
Over the three years Milo has been at this school, I’ve heard a lot of outside commentary about underfunded public schools. People talk like they’re uniformly failing, like the teachers don’t care or the kids don’t try. That’s not what I see. Ms. Lopez gets to school 45 minutes early every day to run free reading groups for kids who need extra help, no extra pay. Our only full-time custodian works 12-hour shifts and still stays late to fix broken swing chains and leaky faucets on his own time. It’s not effort that’s missing. It’s resources.
I’ve also learned that small, concrete actions can make more of a difference than big, abstract complaining. After that PTA meeting, I started doing one simple thing that’s helped more than I expected: at the start of every semester, I text my kid’s teacher and ask, “What’s one thing your class needs right now that I can help with?” Most teachers will never ask for supplies, because they feel like they’re imposing on parents. Last semester, Ms. Lopez told me she needed 15 extra lined notebooks and a pack of thick dry erase markers. I posted the request in our local parent Facebook group, and had all of it dropped off at my house in 48 hours. It doesn’t require a big, stressful fundraiser; it just means asking for what’s actually needed, instead of collecting a bin of generic half-used crayons at back-to-school night that no one ends up using.
Another easy thing most people can do is donate a skill instead of just cash, if you have one. My neighbor is an electrician, he fixed the seven broken outlets in the 2nd grade wing a couple months ago for free, saving the district $800 that they ended up reallocating to new math workbooks. I’m a part-time graphic designer, so I make all the PTA’s flyers and print them at my office for free, cutting their annual overhead in half and letting more of their fundraising money go directly to classroom needs. If you can only spare a few hours a semester, show up to one school board meeting. You don’t have to give a long speech; just bring one specific example of what your school is missing. Last spring, five of us went to a meeting and told the board our 4th grade only had enough math textbooks for half the class, so kids had to share during lessons. They ended up pulling unused admin budget to buy new textbooks that fall. It was a small win, but it mattered for every kid in that grade.
It’s not a fix for the whole broken system. Last month, the school went three days without hand soap in the boys’ bathroom because the cleaning supply budget was stretched too thin. We still don’t have a full-time nurse, so if a kid gets a fever or sprains an ankle at recess, the office secretary has to leave her desk to sit with them until a parent can pick them up. We got a part-time art teacher back this year through a one-time local community grant, but the position isn’t permanent, so we don’t know if it’ll be here next year.
Milo’s reading level is up a full grade since that conference last year, almost entirely because of that extra 45 minutes Ms. Lopez puts in before school every day. I don’t know what will happen with our budget next year, or if the district will ever prioritize our school the way it does the wealthier schools on the other side of town. We keep doing the small things, keep asking what’s needed, keep showing up to the meetings when we can. It’s not enough to fix everything, but it’s enough to make our kids’ days a little easier, right now. That’s all any of us can do, for now.
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