Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - It's back to school season as parents, students and teachers gear up and check off the supply list on everything needed before the first bell rings.
Teachers are not just preparing their lesson plans during the summer, they are getting the school supplies needed for the classroom, themselves and the students, who may not have exactly what they need.
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While it may or may not be common to hear school districts reimbursing educators to an extent for out-of pocket expenses, most teachers reach deep to pay for what their students need to succeed. According to recent data reported by The New York Times and the National Education Association, well over 90% of teachers have to pay out-of-pocket for supplies.
One analysis estimates that this academic year, educators will spend more than $820 out-of-pocket on school supplies.
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Fortunately, for some educators in the Western New York area, there's an organization that helps teachers get what they need for free. The Teacher's Desk, a non-for-profit organization in Buffalo is continuing the work providing over 250 schools annually with school supplies, books and even clothes like socks, that students and teachers need for the school year.
"We are an organization that will help out any any teacher that 70% of the students qualify for government food or reduced lunches," explains Nathan Kuntz, Manager of The Teacher's Desk. "We help out those teachers by giving them free products. We don't sell anything here at The Desk, everything is given away for free. A teacher will come and get about $1,000 worth of school supplies through us normally once, sometimes up to twice a year. We give them everything from pencils to paper to notebooks to anything else that comes in."
The organization gives over $6 million dollars of school supplies annually, which helps over 150,000 kids. The organization gives away backpacks filled with school supplies every year as well. The volunteers have assembled over 17,000 backpacks or "PanchoPacks" this school season for kids, they are on track to give away over 20,000 of them in 2023.
The Teachers Desk is fueled by the hard work of their volunteers and those who donate.
"I love working here. There's so many reasons I love working here," says Kuntz. "Our volunteers are incredible people and they work so hard. They inspire me to work even harder because of who they are and what they do. But seeing a teacher knowing how little they have, and being able to give them so much, knowing that we can affect hundreds of hundred of thousands of kids because of what we're doing is just something that is so hard to explain, it's an incredible, incredible thing that brings so much joy."