Thanks for making my point.I can assure you your experiences cannot be applied across the entire country. Teachers certainly need to buy supplies for their own classrooms, especially in low income districts. I believe the tax write off for supplies is capped at $250, but it's not like writing that off gets you your money back. You're saving like $50 in taxes if you write off the full $250. You're still spending you own personal money. And if no teachers needed to spend their own money on supplies that tax deduction wouldn't exist. But it does, so that should tell you it's a common enough occurrence.
It's capped at $250 for a reason.
OMG, I spent almost a couple of hundred bucks this year on out of pocket school supplies! (Maybe).
Perhaps don't assign nonsense that requires you to go purchase out of pocket supplies.
Anyone that has ever worked in any public sector/government job knows how bullsh*t this argument is.
Paper, pens, basically every type of office supply is open season for employees to take home, and everyone knows it, and no one cares. At all.