It’s become a ritual for many New York City teachers: Head to a 35,000-square-foot warehouse on Northern Boulevard in Queens, take the elevator to the third floor, grab a shopping cart and don’t leave until it’s filled to the brim with classroom supplies — all for free.
Every first Thursday of the month, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs treats teachers to the spree, courtesy of a little-known city program called Materials for the Arts, or MFTA. While the city Department of Education sets aside money for teachers’ choice allotments — or reimbursements for each teacher to get back what they spend annually on their classroom supplies — that money doesn’t always go as far as the students need, some teachers say.
Teachers can get reimbursed up to $220 this school year, the United Federation of Teachers union announced last month. The purchasing period ends on Jan. 8, 2027, while the so-called “late-night” shopping sprees — between 4 and 7 p.m. — run through the end of the school year in June.
That’s led some teachers to gather money to buy supplies via crowdfunding platforms, such as GoFundMe and DonorsChoose. Others depend on MFTA’s teachers’ shopping sprees. The materials come from local theaters’ and schools’ old set designs and props, manufacturers’ discarded products and individual donors. MFTA accepts donations from the public every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., with a loading dock on site for large drop-offs.
Alain Codio, who teaches high schoolers at an architecture- and design-focused school in Williamsburg, said the program is especially useful for afterschool programs that help kids experiment with the arts. While shopping for his school’s upcoming production of “Shrek The Musical,” Codio told The City Reporter he’s come to MFTA for almost 10 years.
“Every school has a certain budget. So for us to be able to run almost 20-something programs in our school, and for Materials to provide a little bit of mixture for every project … it’s less stressful,” Codio added.
For the school’s manufacturing club, Codio picked up tools for model making and laser engraving; for the game design club, PlayStation games; for the school’s Valentine’s Day sip-and-paint (“apple cider, of course”), paint and easels.
‘Democratizing Art Supplies’
The warehouse is lined with yellow buckets full of knickknacks, including office supplies, arts and crafts and, toward the back, couches and tables. The warehouse isn’t open to the public, but serves New York City public school teachers from more than 1,800 schools, and some arts nonprofits, at no cost.
For some, that means paper and pencils. But last Thursday, plastic dinosaur masks — the kind that smell like latex and go over your whole head — were a hot commodity among the city’s public school educators.
“One fun thing is when we get something, sometimes we get 1,000 of it, so we don’t just get one top hat,” said John Cloud Kaiser, MFTA education and gallery director. “We get 1,000 top hats.”
In one cart on the check-out line, more than a dozen dinosaur heads lay stacked next to six rolls of wrapping paper and a pop-up book about architecture.
“We really believe in this idea of democratizing art supplies,” Kaiser said. “So this idea that everything is an art supply, and in that way, everyone’s an artist.”
Peter Thompson, who teaches 11th- and 12th-graders on the Upper West Side, said he once snagged candelabras for a teaching unit on Gothic literature where the class read “Frankenstein.” On another run, he loaded his car up with fake trees to use as props for his school’s production of “Macbeth.”
“I was lucky enough to learn about it in my first year, and I’m in year 10 now, so I’ve been praising it ever since,” Thompson told The City Reporter. His cart was loaded up with copy paper and index cards.
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