Faculty Feeling the Pinch of Tight Education Budgets : Public schools: Teachers buying classroom supplies is nothing new. In Chicago, children were asked to bring toilet tissue from home.

For more than 25 years Norma Jackson has taught first grade at Chicago’s Mary C. Terrell School. In the classroom her pupils briefly escape the poverty of nearby public housing.

These days, however, poverty is no stranger to the nation’s schools. Teachers routinely dip into their own modest salaries to buy the materials their classes need--even the notebook paper.

“It seems like most people are thinking teachers are rich,” said Jackson, who estimated she spends at least $500 of the $30,000 she makes each year on classroom supplies.

“They think teachers are missionaries. I could have become a nun if I wanted to be a missionary.”

According to a 1990 survey of 22,000 teachers nationwide--the most comprehensive recent analysis--96% of teachers are spending their own money on supplies.

In the first half of the 1989-90 school year, teachers spent an average of $250 each on materials, said Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which conducted the survey.

“In what other profession are workers forced to purchase the tools they need to do the work assigned?” asked Boyer.

All the elementary teachers surveyed in Illinois, for example, said they bought classroom supplies; 23% reported spending less than $100 during the first semester; 20% spent between $100 and $199; 39% reported spending $200 to $499; 14% spent $500 to $999; 4% said they spent more than $1,000.

Linda Matsumoto of the Chicago Board of Education said each teacher gets $45 a year, by contract, for incidental supplies. This money is in addition to the supply budget allotted each school and overseen by its principal.

Matsumoto noted that the school system’s supply budget was cut 90% as of Sept. 1.

While some Chicago schools may have been able to stockpile supplies in advance, in others, teachers have asked students to bring their own toilet tissue from home.

Matsumoto said the toilet tissue problem probably was due to “administrative red tape” and has since been resolved. Such shortages could be avoided if principals made their requests properly, she said.

“It should not have happened,” she said. “We are very responsive to the needs, particularly where they concern personal hygiene.”

In emergencies, she said, principals can use discretionary funds under the state’s anti-poverty Chapter I program. Officials don’t advocate using this money for supplies, she said. “But, in a worst-case scenario, that would be one way to alleviate a dire . . . need.”

In Jackson’s South Side classroom, her pupils have the benefits of workbooks, paper, scissors, rulers and crayons she has purchased. A fan she bought helps keep the classroom cool. Frustrated by the school’s malfunctioning equipment, she even bought her class a duplicating machine.

In the booklet “Voices from the Classroom--Exceptional Teachers Speak,” Gene I. Maeroff, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Foundation, wrote: “Teachers recognize the need for experimental education and-or good alternative materials, but often find that they can obtain them only by paying out of their own pockets, an insulting and prohibitive activity.”

The booklet was published in 1990 by the Washington-based National Foundation for the Improvement of Education, a group founded by the National Education Assn.

At East Poinsett County Schools in Lepanto, Ark., librarian Charlotte Strickland said she spent about $85 of her own money the first week of school on items such as tape, paper punches and pens.

Strickland, who makes about $21,000, said the school provides at least $9 per student, but one hardback book may cost about $10.

To raise money, she operates the school’s bookstore and holiday gift shop and sponsors a book fair.

“We have even bought paint for our classrooms, to paint the bookcases, desks, whatever,” she said.

Marylin Gasquet, who teaches academically gifted children at Jefferson Parish School System in Metairie, La., said she spends about $150 a year of her own money for supplies. She has taught 27 years and makes about $30,000 annually.

The PTO for Bissonet Plaza Elementary School gives Mrs. Gasquet and other teachers $20 each in annual supply money because the school can’t afford it, she said. “At one time we did get supply money, or at least we got supplies. With all the cutbacks . . . there just isn’t extra money,” she explained.

Bissonet Plaza PTO President Cindy Massey said such donations are up to each PTO chapter.

“I know of a second-grade teacher who buys pencils to give to the children as . . . a little reward,” Massey said.

She also has seen teachers give lunch money to needy children. “They don’t like to see the children do without,” she said.