Institute for Local Self Reliance: “Here’s why teachers should break up with Amazon’s wish lists — and where to find better alternatives.  Teachers routinely spend their own money on school supplies. With public school district budgets being slashed nationwide, over 90 percent of public K-12 teachers now pay for classroom supplies out of their own pockets, spending an average of $895 annually. It’s no surprise, then, that tens of thousands of teachers post online wish lists for their classrooms, asking parents and other community members to help them out. But every time teachers post a classroom wish list on Amazon, they’re essentially voting against their next pay raise. It’s elementary math: Money spent buying supplies from Amazon leaves the community and goes to Amazon and its investors. Fewer local sales mean less tax revenue. Less tax revenue means less money for schools and for teacher salaries. But money spent buying supplies from local, independent businesses remains local, supporting jobs, sustaining a local business network — printers, cleaning services, accountants, and more — and generating some of the tax revenue that pays teachers’ salaries. When a community loses an independent business, it also loses the direct support — economic and social — that they provide. An astonishing 90 percent of small businesses provided financial support to school and youth programs in their communities in 2023, plus in-kind support and volunteer labor. Losing this support deprives students of opportunities to gain first-hand experience working for an independent business. And, perhaps most crucially, communities lose the accountability that independent businesses provide. Their success depends on maintaining a good reputation in the community. If a school has a time-sensitive need, many local businesses will do everything possible to get the product there on time — but Jeff Bezos isn’t going to lose any sleep over late or lost orders. Drained local economies lead to drained school budgets, fueling a surge in teacher wish lists that are becoming almost synonymous with Amazon. Even wish list platforms that appear neutral are often intertwined with the online giant. For example, TeacherLists.com, which aggregates teachers’ wish lists and student supply lists, claims to have almost two million lists on its platform, which it then shares with major retailers, including Amazon. The wishlist website GetYourTeachOn had hosted 68,000 wish lists by October 2024; in response to a question from us, one of the site’s representatives wrote, “ALL of our wish lists on our site go to Amazon links!” Here are good options that teachers can use instead of going to Amazon…”

• See also Turning Public Money into Amazon’s Profits: The Hidden Cost of Ceding Government Procurement to a Monopoly Gatekeeper