There are gender wars, and then there are casualties. It wasn’t until 2011 that the behemoth toymaker LEGO acknowledged girls’ desire to build with bricks, even though the company had long before made a seemingly effortless pivot to co-branding, video games, and major motion pictures. So it’s little wonder that girls face all-too-real obstacles when […]
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America’s teachers are paying $480 million dollars out of their pockets to feed our kids. Earlier this week, Share Our Strength, a nonprofit working to end childhood hunger in America, reported that “61% of teachers who see children coming to school hungry because they are not eating at home purchase food for their classrooms, at an average of $25 a month.”
There are approx 3.5 million jobs for kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and secondary school teachers, in the U.S. (2008 stats from Bureau of Labor Statistics).
3.5 million teachers x 61% buying food x $25/month x 9 months per school year = $480 million dollars
The Share Our Strength survey was conducted September 20 through October 2010, with a sample of 638 K-8 public school teachers nationwide. The survey was sent by email; teachers’ email addresses were drawn from list provided by Market Data Retrieval (MDR). The margin of sampling error for the survey +/- 4.0 percentage points. The census reports more teachers (over 6 million in 2008), but it’s unclear how many of them are actively working), so this subsidy could be closer to $1 billion.
For more info, see coverage by USA Today: “Children are coming to school hungry” or the full report (PDF).