What was the schoolboard’s response when you proposed this solution?
Teachers are fools if they privately collect money from students. Seriously. It’s a great way to end up accused of stealing, through any number of pathways. PTAs need to be collecting money from parents, instead. My son’s elementary school PTA sells and delivers supply packs at cost. School offices can do so as well, but that means the money rolls through the school budget and it’s more complicated.
At the older grades, the problem with this is that many of the supplies are personal and can be reused or repurposed: binders, highlighters, map colors, etc. Poor kids can scrounge these things from last year, friends, and family more easily than they can come up with $50. On the other hand, having a “supply pack” makes it easier to have scholarships for kids who can’t afford it, and a wise PTA offers the opportunity to donate extra $$ towards these scholarships at the point of sale for the supply packs.
I see the risk of accepting cash, but I’m thinking it’s not too big of one. I have multiple kids, and at least one of the kids’ teachers did ask for money, which we gladly obliged. The other gave the supply list, which spawned the thread. The PTA also asks for money, which is fine too. If the school decided to put the PTA in charge of school supplies, and have them collect all the money for all the classes I’d be fine with that.
I am going to run to join the PTA the next round there are openings so that will be my proposal. The whole supply list thing just bugs in how inefficient it is.
I’ve sometimes wished that our school would just collect the money, but as has been pointed out above, that also means that I can’t manage the supplies we have at home – a lot of the things on the list I already own, so they are already a sunk cost, as it were. I don’t feel any particular need to pay for them twice.
I have some quibbles about how my kid’s teacher organizes the supply list, but they’re pretty minor in the scheme of things.
It’s easy for you to say it’s not too big of one when you aren’t shouldering the risk. Having a crazy parent accuse you of theft or profiteering is a nightmare. Even if it happens once every ten years, it’s too often.
When I was a young teacher, I’d sell books for cash. I always lost money on the deal, but I didn’t care. My thoughts were much like yours: I could get the books much cheaper in bulk, and it was so much more efficient. But I’m older now, and I’ve seen others put in serious fear of losing their job doing similar things. I don’t do it anymore. It only takes one kid who impulsively spends the money on something else then panics and sticks to the story that he gave it to the teacher, or one parent who lies to another, or someone being absent minded and not believing they never gave it to you.
The PTA can and should handle this. It works really well.
This is a fair point. Some teachers at my kids’ school use Donor’s Choose. It’s like gofundme for teachers.
If I purchased anything I thought was of special quality for my child, I labeled it in permanent marker before it went to school. So zipper cases - label. Pocket folders - label. Crayola crayons - label. My child always got their own items. I still have labeled scissors and rulers 20 years later…
Former teacher’s aid (para) at a charter school for first graders. The requested list of supplies were pooled in our 1st grade classroom. Not all students could bring in or afford what was on the list, so everyone got stuff no matter what.
Pencil sharpening was done by teachers before kids arrived, in a “give one, take one” model. Occasionally we had to “clean desks” to find the pencil hoarders, who didn’t go by the honor system.
Ironically, a discussion with my hubby revealed that he was a pencil “hoarder” as an elementary student. It’s a thing.
My daughter had these on her supply list for ninth grade :eek: But they’re not used for refrigerator art 
The years my kid’s stuff hasn’t been pooled (which infuriates me, as a struggling, poor, single parent… I don’t have the resources to be subsidizing someone else’s kid when we were probably the worst-off in the class) … so when it wasn’t pooled, I wouldn’t get the stuff back at the end of the year. I think I maybe got a dictionary back last year and piles of assorted broken crayons.
My beef with the list this year (and a few other years) is that it is poorly written. Look, your JOB is to communicate with children and their parents. You had to have completed at least one college degree. You can be specific and spell things correctly, ok?
If I see one more list of “4 packages of pencils,” I’m going to scream. Say “At least 20 pencils.” It really made my blood boil this year because parts of the list were TOO specific. Not just “blue” folders but “light blue.” Um, I’m not going to different stores to do SHADES of blue. I bought navy, technically the lightest (only) blue Target had.
You’re going to want my kid to be consistent and thorough. Please set a good example with your dang list.
If giving plain old cash for the classroom would be a potential problem, how about like a class registry? Instead of wedding or baby, classroom wish list? Teacher goes to store of choice (even their website!) and puts “250 black bic pens model xyz”. “50 mead hi-liters model abc color yellow.” I wonder if that would work better.
You hit on one of my complaints with our school list – it’s not done very well. I think a registry would help. One thing on my kid’s list this year was “dry erase markers - fine line.” So I go to a major retailer web site, and the typical brand of dry erase markers comes in “thin” and “ultra fine” versions. I’m thinking the teacher probably means “thin” … but maybe not? A link to a specific item on a web site would have been better, maybe there is some esoteric brand that comes in “fine.”
But I would only want a registry if there was no expectation that I buy from the registry directly. Maybe I will because it’s convenient, maybe I already have some of the items at home, maybe I think it’s worth my while to shop around for a lower price.
As long as we’re venting about school lists, at the end of last year there was a shift in teachers to different grades, so last year’s 1st grade teacher moved to a higher grade, and another teacher was assigned to 1st grade. The supply list was most likely already prepared, and a hard copy was sent home and a 2 page PDF was put on the school web site. When I started school shopping, it was obvious to me (but apparently not obvious to anyone at the school) that instead of replacing the former teacher’s list with the new teacher’s list, that somehow the two lists had been merged. I could tell that one teacher used a format like “glue sticks - 2 packs of 3” and the other teacher used “2 packs of glue sticks (3 sticks per pack).” Some of the items were slightly different, such as “Crayola crayons - 2 boxes of 24 crayons” and “4 boxes of Crayola crayons (8 crayons per box).” Some of the items I thought might be the same thing, but I wasn’t entirely sure, such as “composition notebook” and “writing journal.” Because I am THAT PARENT, I wrote to the school office to ask for clarification, and included a list of each duplicate item. About a day later, an email was sent out to the class, explaining that the previous list contained last year’s as well as this year’s supply list, and to please check the web site for the new, correct, updated list. I went to the web site, the first page of the PDF was new and updated … and the second page was the same as before. They only looked at the first page.
Okay, that was too long and I sound like a crazy person, but why was that so HARD? To be fair to the school, if I had used my judgment and sent in more or less what was on the list, I don’t think they would have pressed me to adjust anything.
The thing is, we never all lined up at the pencil sharpener en masse. Each of us would go to the sharpener individually, as needed.
And the reason is, at the beginning of the school year somebody has already sharpened all the pencils. Either the parents or the teacher.
(Or the teacher’s husband. My wife sometimes asks me to do it for her in the days before school starts.)
As someone with an affinity for office/school supplies, I hate the idea. At my daughter’s school you can pay a fee and have them buy the supplies for you. I did that once and never again. For the most part, the supplies were low quality and boring.
Some of the items on the list are for the classroom (such as Kleenex), but the rest are for the individual’s use. Lucky for me, my daughter lets me pick out the supplies and it’s like Christmas for me! She loves anime so there are a lot of cute Japanese items this year…Can’t wait to surprise her with the “Yuri on ice” pencil case.
Yeah, I’m in the minority here. 
In a lot of states these supply lists have to be 100% optional. They aren’t always labeled as such. Schools may also be prohibited from requiring fees as well if they are public and between certain grades.
I am not sure the best way to get supplies to the hands of those who need it and also encourage people feel a bit of buy in to the system.
Why does a fifth grader need a “package of red ballpoint pens”? I’m guessing those are for the teacher, who plans to need a whole package for each student. :eek: No wonder the teacher doesn’t want to buy his/her own.
When my daughter taught 5th grade (she’s teaching middle school now) she’d send a note home to parents listing things that she’d like to have for the classroom for all of the kids. Those who could afford it would provide for those who couldn’t, and the whole class benefited. So did my daughter, because she wasn’t out of pocket for a bunch of supplies.
Heck, we used to take her shopping (as a teacher!!) and buy her things she knew she’d need. Even with the meager allotment of funds from the school, she would spend several hundred more because to her, it was important that the kids have what they needed, and the school was the poorest one in the county.
She doesn’t deal with that in middle school. Of course, she has to deal with middle schoolers, but that’s another thread.
You’re looking at this from the perspective of a parent who can buy everything on that list, no problem.
Johnny’s parents might not be able to afford that stuff. But they very well may have 80% of that list already available from previous years. Your child may start the year with a brand new binder. Johnny may use the one from 4th grade. He may have a plastic baggy of loose colored pencils instead of a fresh box. Johnny’s mother may be able to take advantage of any number of “back to school” initiatives that provide supplies to needy kids. Whatever. There are lots of ways for determined parents to work around this sort of thing.
If the teacher just adds up the expected cost and sends all the kids home with a dollar value, Johnny’s parents may be unable to afford that kind of cash. Now what do they do? Either deal with the humiliating task (with Johnny as the intermediary) of informing the teacher that the family is too poor for school supplies, spend money they can’t afford, or ignore the cost and send Johnny to school without paying in the hopes the teacher will just deal with it.
I promise you - these are the sorts of problems that keep caring teachers awake at night and eventually drive them away from education altogether.
My sister is having her daughter/my niece start Kindergarten in a few weeks and they gave her one of these lists. What is most bothersome about it, there is some type of brand loyalty going on. Everything on it has to be name brand. I know my sister will only get my niece the best, but it bothers her and worries me about the school system that REQUIRES premium products for students… It absolutely must be 3M, Crayola, Elmer’s etc. Anyone else hear of this?
Never.
I can imagine a teacher going to Amazon (or wherever) and just copy/pasting the names of products onto a list. It’s harder to imagine a teacher demanding loyalty to a specific set of brands.
Does the list actually say that the brands have to be adhered to, or are they just there with no explanation?