Why do US teachers have to ask parents to bring basic school supplies?
I've also seen US teachers spending hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets to stock classrooms.
I spent a lot of time in European schools and I've never heard of teachers having to stock their own classrooms or fundraise for things like playgrounds, etc.
Education is way undervalued. Teacher pay is horrible and the schools don't have enough funding for the number of students. So years ago they started putting more and more of the obligation on the parents (and, actually, on the teachers) to supply their own materials.
As someone from Central Pennsylvania with only 300 total students from K-12th grade, we are simultaneously drowning and shooting ourselves in the foot with the local R’s we put on school boards