It’s old news by now that teachers spend their own money on classroom supplies, but a new Washington Post report finds that the problem is even bigger than we knew. (And we knew it was big.) The Post asked teachers to tell what classroom supplies they buy and how much they spend, and got 1,200 responses.

“I am a scavenger,” said one Michigan teacher. “My friend who works in the Michigan [Department of Natural Resources] office gives me their used binders, and my husband brings me furniture and supplies that the hospital he works at is throwing away.”

According to an Ohio teacher, “We are literally collecting pop tabs to recycle so we can buy more stuff.” A California teacher takes “discarded things off the side of the road.”

Teachers are making up for what cities and towns should be providing their schools to begin with—basic necessities at the level people in just about every other job can take for granted. “I’m often bowled over by the fact that financiers and software engineers can show up to work expecting to have every supply they could possibly need,” said a New York teacher.

And it must be the government that pays for needed supplies. Education is a public good that should be handled in a public way, not reliant on individuals. Another teacher told The Post that she hates coverage of donors fulfilling teachers’ wishlists for supplies, because “It normalizes this begging practice. If we properly funded schools and trusted teachers, we could stop seeing teachers beg online and restore their dignity.” And take the luck out of it, where some classrooms get everything they need and others are left wanting.

This is a sign of so many things wrong with U.S. society and politics. It shows the low, low value placed not just on teachers but on kids and on the very concept of education. Teachers have been fighting and still are fighting to fix it, but it can’t just be on them.

This article was originally published at Daily Kos on November 11, 2019. Reprinted with permission.