Teacher gift calculator

Methodology

This tool runs the Kindhow Scale, version 1.0, in its list form — the same shape as the holiday tipping list and the wedding vendor tip calculator, one row per person rather than one baseline and a stack of adjustments. Two things here are new, and both are about honesty rather than arithmetic.

The formula

for each person on your list:

  the published band     the survey's average and its most common
                         amount for that role, low to high
    ± where you live     BEA price parity, as a nudge inside the band
    ± the occasion       holidays / end of year = as published
                         appreciation week      = half            judgment
    → round to a figure you can actually hand over  (lib/giveable.js)

  giving on your own     → that is the gift
  chipping in on a class → × how many families are in

  then the limit, if the school has one:
    over it              → cut to the largest giveable figure under it
                           the regulation's cut          sourced
                           your district's number, cut   judgment
    under it             → nothing happens, nothing is shown

  ─────────────
  = one line per person   = your share, once the class has chipped in
  a line calls itself sourced only while its figure is still inside
  the band its source published

The limit, and why it is a control

Every other teacher-gift page answers “how much” and stops. In a great many public schools there is a second question underneath it — how much the teacher is allowed to accept — and it is the one with a citable answer.

Massachusetts wrote it down. 930 CMR 5.08(14) says a public school employee may accept “a gift, or several gifts during the school year, from public school students and/or their parents and guardians, with an aggregated value of up to $150, if the gift is identified only as being from the class, and the identity of givers and amounts given are not identified to the recipient.” Two clauses there do real work. The $150 is aggregated across the whole school year, not per occasion. And the anonymity condition is not decoration: a class gift with a signed list of who gave what is not covered by the exemption at all.

Separately, the same regulation’s general rule is that a public employee may not accept a gift worth $50 or more given because of their position, which is why an individual gift on this tool comes down to $45 — the largest amount you can actually hand over that is still under the line.

That is not a nudge, it is a different answer, which is the whole reason the limit is a control on the form and not a sentence at the bottom of the page. Where the cut is the regulation’s, the line stays tagged sourced — the reduction is the citation. Where you have typed in your own district’s number, the line is tagged house judgment: the number is theirs, but treating it as a hard ceiling rather than a target is our call.

Published amounts — sourced

The figures come from the Park Slope Parents holiday tips survey, which has run annually since 2011 and is the only source we found that publishes actual reported amounts by school role rather than a range invented for a blog post. It gives two numbers per role — the average and the most frequently given amount — and two published points is a published band. This model works inside it.

The bus driver row is worth a look: the most common gift ($50) is above the average ($40), because a tail of smaller gifts pulls the mean down. The band is $40–$50 either way, and the model reads the smaller and larger of the two rather than assuming which is which.

Where the tag comes from

On this tool the sourced / house judgment tag is computed, not declared. A line calls itself sourced only while its final figure sits inside the band its source published; the moment our occasion factor, our regional nudge or our rounding takes it outside, the tag flips and the line says which of those did it.

This matters here in a way it did not on the earlier tools, where published ranges were wide. A K-12 teacher’s band is $50 to $59 — there is exactly one round figure inside it. So in a high-cost state the model lands on $60, which is a perfectly sensible amount and is not a number Park Slope Parents published. Saying so costs us a sourced tag on that line and is the only honest option.

The occasion — judgment

The survey asked about year-end holiday gifts, so that is the on-source occasion. The end of the school year gets the same figure, and the line says so rather than inventing a difference nobody has measured. Teacher Appreciation Week takes half, which is ours — and halving a figure necessarily takes it below the published band, so those lines are tagged judgment automatically.

Where you live

The bands come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Regional Price Parities for 2024, and shift you up or down within each published band. A state ten points above the US average moves you a fifth of the way up. That inference is ours, not BEA’s: nobody has studied whether teacher gifts track regional price levels.

There is an awkwardness here we would rather name than hide. The survey is Brooklyn, which is already an expensive place, so the “US average” setting is not really an average — it is a Brooklyn figure with our adjustment applied. If you are somewhere inexpensive, the bottom of each band is the honest read, and the most-common column is a better guide than the average one.

What this tool will not do

• It will not tell you a gift is expected. Teachers are not tipped staff and a card with a specific sentence in it is worth more to most of them than an envelope. There is no amount on this page you owe anybody.
• It does not know your state’s rule. Massachusetts is here because its Ethics Commission published exact figures for exactly this situation. Most states’ public-employee gift statutes are written for lobbyists and contractors and say nothing legible about a $20 mug, so the honest option is the one this tool offers: type in what your handbook says.
• It computes a value, not a form. Whether that value may be cash, a gift card or only classroom supplies is a district-by-district question. Alabama restricts gifts to public employees to items of de minimis value and its Ethics Commission has advised that stated-value gift cards are out; plenty of districts write something similar. Check before you shop.
• Its figures are one city’s. Park Slope Parents surveys Brooklyn families. It is the best published source we found and it is still a convenience sample from an expensive neighbourhood. If somebody runs a national survey of this, we will move to it.
• It is not legal advice. The Massachusetts material is quoted to explain what the rule says, not to tell you or your school how to apply it.

Sources

• Park Slope Parents — 2024 Holiday Tips Survey — the average and most-common amount for each school role, and the finding that 84% of parents give through a joint class gift rather than individually.
• 930 CMR 5.08 — Massachusetts State Ethics Commission, exemptions relating to gifts — the $150 aggregate class-gift exemption, its anonymity condition, and the $50 threshold behind the individual limit.
• Massachusetts State Ethics Commission — Gifts to Public School Teachers and Staff — the Commission’s own plain-English page for parents and teachers.
• U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis — Regional Price Parities, 2024 — the regional price bands.

Informational only, not professional advice. The Kindhow Scale is a published model, not a standard, and the lines marked house judgment are our reasoning and nothing more. Nothing here is legal advice. Last reviewed: August 2026. Scale version 1.0. Figures that come from a publication are re-checked against their source on a monthly cycle; when one moves, the version number moves with it.