Community Embraces New Word Game at Mid-Year Play Day This past Sunday, families at Takoma Park’s Seventh Annual Mid-Year Play Day had the opportunity to experience OtherWordly for the first time. Our educational language game drew curious children and parents to our table throughout the afternoon. Words in Space Several children gathered around our iPads […]
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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).