I remember when I was in school and teachers complained about the costs of supplies they needed to provide for themselves, including things like markers to use

I remember when I was in school and teachers complained about the costs of supplies they needed to provide for themselves, including things like markers to use on the whiteboards (public school in Utah, roughly the ages 12-18). As far as I know, these public school administrations (in Utah) don't have a legal mandate to pay for or reimburse such costs. More recently -- within the past two years -- I worked with someone who moved into software development from being a music teacher at a local high school (still in Utah, roughly ages 15-18, not where I went) where her boss (the principal) made her cry on many days with verbal abuse about how she's not working hard enough, not meeting certain metrics, whatever happened to be the problem at the time. In high school I had a teacher who put in absolutely no effort to teach unless / until the school district sent someone to sit in on (one of) his classes to verify that he does his job. To make it appear that he did his job, he coached the class to always raise their hand whenever he asked any question. Over the years he devised a system for this: if you believe you know the answer to the question raise your right hand, otherwise your left. To my knowledge, there wasn't any sort of disciplinary action taken against him. (Otherwise, that class was "read this chapter of the textbook and then rewrite and answer the questions at the end" and I'm pretty sure I failed it. It was a World History class, for the curious.) I doubt the school had a budget that not only allowed competitive salaries but also some mechanism to increase the budget and therefore salaries. Some teachers put up with the bullshit, at least for a time, because they have a passion (sound familiar?) for teaching. Others, I think, give the effort they get. It's nice to see this getting some amount of attention even if I'm not particularly surprised by the headline (or might have some reservations about the wording "midst of a ... crisis"; kinda think we've been here since before I was in school but what do I know?).