Stephen Colbert is helping Craig Newmark get the word out on DonorsChoose.org, a crowd-funding site to raise money for stressed schools in New Jersey.
By Craig Newmark
A strong country relies on an educated populace -- a populace with access and expertise to sophisticated technology, whose educators get the respect and pay that they've earned and deserve. That's not happening. Teachers don't get no respect.
The least we can do, I believe, is to help our teachers out a little -- person-to-person, classroom-by-classroom, and show our support.
Here's the deal: 9 out of 10 public school teachers across the U.S. routinely pay for basic supplies from frequently meager salaries. That's "basic," not like iPads and big-screen interactive TVs, chemistry equipment or boxing gear. I'm talking about paper, pencils, paint and textbooks.
All in all, teachers spend about $1.6 billion of their own money annually on school supplies. That's in the United States of America.
New Jersey is a microcosm of what's happening around the country.
According to a new report by the Education Law Center, this school year, New Jersey's highest wealth school districts had access to $2,850 per pupil more than poor districts. Over six years, 2008-09 to 2004-15 funding increased in the Garden State's high wealth districts by 11 percent, while funding in low wealth districts declined by 3 percent.
Thirty years after courts mandated more equitable distribution of resources, poorer school districts are still hurting. The state's fifth largest, the Toms River Regional School District, for example, is in a fiscal crisis, and district officials have pleaded with Gov. Chris Christie for a financial bailout.
The Paterson Public School District, the state's third largest, is also one of its poorest and struggling. Stefanie Lupo, a first-grade teacher in Paterson, teaches kids who've been diagnosed on the Autism spectrum. She has no textbooks, so she's forced to borrow books from the local library.
I'm a proud product of public education! I'm so honored to sponsor schools in Chattanooga on #BestSchoolDay https://t.co/gB6wrXDcTU
-- Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) March 10, 2016
Marilou Weber teaches in the Haleyville-Mauricetown Elementary School in Port Norris. It's part of the rural Commercial Township School District, close to the Delaware Bay, whose families, are ranked as among the poorest in the state. Many of her students, whose parents are fishermen and crabbers, are struggling to achieve, handicapped by poverty and limited access to technology.
As a 1950s-style nerd who's spent a career finding ways for people to connect and get stuff done, hearing about Ms. Lupo and Mrs. Weber, I wanted to help.
I was born and raised in Morristown, N.J., and went to public schools. I was raised in a family that hovered somewhere between poverty and lower middle class. My playground was a junkyard down the street. Years after we moved away, our house became a crack house and will be demolished soon.
RELATED: Giving N.J.'s poor kids a leg up in school
I think back about teachers like my history teacher, Anton Schulzki, who motivated me to understand that "the [trustworthy] press is the immune system of democracy," an idea that inspired me and that I'm acting upon, via work with TheTrustProject.org, the Poynter Institute, the Columbia Journalism School, and others.
Back then, I didn't get that teachers were sometimes badly respected and underpaid, and it seems much worse nowadays. Teachers and schools are in trouble.
We can't rely on others to fix the problem for us, but we can work together to support our schools, which is why I've stepped forward and encouraged others to do so. There are new web-based technologies that are now enabling communities to self-organize -- to improve our lives.
Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) announces he's funding all @donorschoose projects in Iowa! #BestSchoolDayhttps://t.co/h3QZOERowM
-- CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) March 10, 2016
A good example is DonorsChoose.org, which provides a web platform where individual donors can make a person-to-person connection with individual teachers and classrooms. It allows donors to see the immediate and direct impact of our giving. Through this platform alone, 17.5 million kids have benefitted.
This morning, DonorsChoose.org announced that it would be the #BestSchoolDay ever for classrooms-in-need across the state of New Jersey and in communities spanning over 30 states, thanks to a "Flash Fund" spearheaded by the organization. This effort brought together some prominent people in tech, sports and Hollywood, and we quickly raised more than $10 million for classrooms across the U.S.
(Special credit to Stephen Colbert: He's also motivated me to help fund a lot of classroom projects in schools that serve military families.)
I'm a huge fan of these "self-organizing communities," which in a flash can make stuff happen. Real, sustainable connections make a difference in changing people's lives. We have the tools to help make it the #BestSchoolDay every day.
Craig Newmark is an internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder of craigslist and craigconnects. He's seriously an old-school nerd, not all that social, but who helps people who are doing good work that matters.
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