N&R Covers Teacher Supply Warehouse

Today's News & Record covers yesterday's grand-reopening of the so-called Teacher Supply Warehouse (click here for previous coverage).

N&R:

A partnership of local community groups and the school system opened the warehouse last year to help supply high-poverty schools. However, the doors were opened to every school this week.

"We just saw a real need with the budget issues they are facing," said Margaret Arbuckle, director of the Guilford Education Alliance, one of the groups responsible for the supply warehouse.

Last month, school officials announced they would need to make more than $5 million in budget cuts because of a state budget shortfall and lower-than -expected student enrollment. About 25 percent of the money allocated to the schools for instructional supplies, which pay for in-class items like paper and pencils, is also being withheld pending final budget changes.

Many of those items sat in the bottom of the carts about 75 teachers pushed around the warehouse aisles Tuesday. The teachers said they often buy these types of supplies and even more expensive items out of their own pockets.

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E.C. :)