For six years now, Frisco ISD has been providing teachers with $250 stipends to use on classroom decorations, supplies, and other necessities and the 2024-2025 school year is no exception with teachers getting this year’s funds on Friday.
“So, I usually use it for classroom supplies, so stuff like pens, pencils that sometimes I put out for students to use,” teacher Hsi Hou Fernandez said. “I bought my own privacy folders when the ones we’ve had for like five or six years started getting written all over. It’s just little things here and there. I can’t even think of every single thing, but it could be something as simple as just whiteboard markers, Kleenex boxes when we run out, whiteboard erasers in the past, decorations.”
With an almost 25% increase in the cost of school supplies since 2020, this stipend seems to be a welcome addition for teachers and students alike.
“I really appreciate it,” Fernandez said. “As a teacher who has been teaching for 17 years now, it comes in really handy because teachers are always buying supplies for their classroom, be it like pencils, Kleenex when we run out, or random things that make the classroom kind of feel a little more welcoming to students, like decorations. All of that stuff kind of adds up.”
But for some teachers, knowledge of this stipend doesn’t seem to be as common as it should be, raising questions about its effectiveness.
“I think it is a good thing that the district is doing,” teacher Grace Holcombe said. “However, I didn’t really know that was a thing. So I wonder if other teachers are capitalizing on it like they could be.”
Regardless, for teachers including Holcombe, this stipend proves to be a useful tool in welcoming students and making them feel at home, especially in light of the district’s budget deficit.
“Generally, I would say yes[, the stipend is beneficial for teachers],” Holcombe said. “I do realize that the district [is]… in a budget deficit and y’know we do want to be conscious of that. However, a good, decorated classroom with good supplies for students is always needed. That’s how students feel welcomed and safe in schools and with their teachers.”
As a result, most purchases with these stipends tend to be everyday things that both students and teachers use on a regular basis.
“A lot of it’s like decorations and then student-use stuff that’s just small things,” Fernandez said. “I bought my own pencil sharpeners that are nicer, that don’t keep breaking. But a lot of it is just classroom posters or the calendar on the wall or those type of things.”
But regardless of what teachers use this money for, the benefits of the stipend are apparent to students, such as junior Krushna Shinde.
“I think it’s really good that [teachers are] getting [the stipends] because ultimately whatever supplies they buy for the classroom will help them teach us and help us learn,” Shinde said. “So, I feel like it’ll be really beneficial for our learning environment as well as the learning process.”
