In South Carolina we get $250 from the state every year on the first day of school. We need to turn in receipts for it at my school.

I’m not sure what you mean by allocation money, but my district (outside Fort Worth, Texas) gives each teacher $200 a few days before the school year begins to purchase school supplies. We also have a storage room full of office supply items that we can obtain things from (including printer ink cartridges, which I probably go through about 6 or so a year that that’s about $200 alone right there!).

One last thing, I’m my school’s ESL coordinator, so have money designated to my program that I can purchase items with. I don’t get specifics on how much, but last year I was able to get a copy/printer/scanner, a shredder, a CD/tape player, and about $1000 in materials and books.

Our district also has many opportunities for grants. I received a $1000 grant last year for a project I wanted to do for my school’s ESL program.

However, I also spend a lot of money out of my pocket – A LOT. Last year I had about $50 of poi shipped in from Hawaii for our spring open house, and the year before that I bought about $100 in model rocket materials and engines for an end of the year student project.

Wow! Maybe I need to move to Alabama.

I teach in Maryland. Everything is different per county. The only thing that is state wide is the $250 tax credit we earn on our taxes each year. My particular county gives us $100 in the beginning of the year (but I forget when…sometime before Thanksgiving). Some years when my particular school’s PTA has extra funds we will get some money from them. Last year they gave us each a gift card for $50.

The only other money we get from the county is tuition reimbursement. They give us $750 per class for up to 2 classes per year.

Other counties in MD may do things completely differently. So I can’t speak for the entire state.

I am in Texas. Our school gets a certain amount of money based on the Average Daily Attendance of our students. So the more students in attendance the more money we receive. I am in a middle school and our funds are divided by department. I am the chairperson of the science dept in my school and our dept. has a total of 6 teachers. My dept. annual budget is close to $5000 a year. My teachers turn in their requests and as long as the money lasts, I order the supplies they want. Our money for copy paper is taken out of those funds as well. Our money is available September 1st. I will say that I don’t know any teacher that doesn’t spend some of their own money on supplies for the classroom.

I am a special education teacher in New York City. Special educators receive $215 per academic year for our expenses. General education teachers receive $245 per year. We get our checks in December. Our period to make purchases are from August 1 to March 15. Of course this is not nearly enough.

I teach in a private (Catholic) school in Illinois. I receive $0. We can order things at the beginning of the year (desk supplies, art supplies, etc), but we never receive a check to do buy things we want. Each year I spend an average of $400 of my own money on things for my student and classroom.

I teach in Maryland. I got $375 to purchase classroom supplies from an “approved” catalog, which is over priced and it is irritating that I can’t go to WalMart, Staples, or Costco and get more for the money…

I also get $100 from the PTA.

I am in California. Title 1 school, biggest district. I get 120 dollars per year.

I usually spend 100 per month out of my own pocket.

Whoa — that’s really low. I live in Michigan. Even the poorest schools get over $700 per pupil. It is supposed to come in Oct, but we sometimes have to “rebate” some of it if we don’t raise enough taxes.