Oklahoma teacher reduced to panhandling for supplies as GOP cuts ravage school budget

A Tulsa, OK third grade teacher has taken to begging for money on the side of the road to buy her students the school supplies they need thanks to cuts to the state education budget.

Tulsa's Fox News 23 said that Teresa Danks has spent years paying for school supplies out of her own paycheck. Now she is asking the public for help and calling attention to the struggle facing the state's teachers, who have watched their annual budgets get smaller and smaller.

Danks says each year she typically spends $2,000 to $3,000 of her $35,000 salary on materials for the classroom. Oklahoma ranks near the bottom, nationally, on teacher salaries.

“It all adds up week after week and month after month,” Danks said. “So, it’s a huge need.”

She told Fox 23 that she hopes other teachers will join her in the effort to bring awareness to the fact that state legislators are slowly starving the education system to death with relentless cutbacks.

She also urged people nationwide to donate to their local schools, saying that many teachers like herself are in similar situations.

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