Everyone is in a precarious position financially. The way out is better education opportunities. Where do you think that farmer got his education? Who do you think paid for it?
The community. That’s who. Working together to provide a better opportunity for the children of that community.
Now it’s his turn.
Just the list for one of my kids was a few hundred bucks, and we ended up getting 3 different lists with many redundancies and contradictions. I hate back to school shopping and I am relatively poor. I wonder how a lot of people even manage at all. And, yes, most of the supplies are community supplies that are redistributed. There are also personal supplies and accessories and some are very specific - often not in the quantities or types that are actually sold in stores. Plus we pay annual school fees and I pay local school taxes out of each payroll and at tax time, in addition to property taxes that are supposed to pay for something.
In most areas, the tax rate on agricultural land is much lower than for commercial or residential land.
Lucky you, to have a basement! In my day…
I know, but that rate is not zero.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for adequately funding schools and would gladly pay a bit more in property tax, I’m just trying to point out that it isn’t easy for everyone to be able to pay more.
From the other side…
I’ve taught early childhood (PreK, K, 1st) for umpteen years in an extremely poor neighborhood. The teachers in my school would never ask the parents or guardians for money, and lists of school supplies are pretty bare-bones so as not to strain anyone’s pocketbook.
For many years now I have made up my own “school goody bags” that I give out the first day of class. For the K and 1st graders I would include 3 composition books, crayons, pencils, a ruler, scissors, folders, glue sticks, erasers, stickers, a few other items. The children are only responsible for bringing their notebooks back and forth - all other supplies are to stay at home. If the children need pencils, crayons, scissors, etc. I use class bins.
I haunt discount stores all summer for these supplies, take advantage of penny sales at Staples, etc.
Expensive, yes, but no one ever needs to be ashamed in my class.
My other post was too wordy… 
Just wanted to add that the only crayons that exist to me are Crayola - any other brand is usually a waxy mess.
Wallet, that’s awesome.
As a third grade teacher, I can’t find much to criticize in Bone’s OP. I hate doing a class supply list in June for next year. It’s hard for me to know what I’m going to need come March of the next year. It would work much better for me just to get money from the PTO that I can spend easily in an online store to get the supplies that I need.
But It’s not up to the individual teacher. I believe it is a districtwide decision. I have to come up with a supply list by the end of the school year for next school year, and it has to match the supply list for all the other third-grade teachers.
Here’s hoping that changes.
Luxury! We had to be bussed to a range as part of 10th grade phy. ed. This was part of “hunter safety,” a unit that only boys got. Our instructor was memorable: a veteran of Okinawa who insisted on teaching us exactly what he had been taught at Parris Island in 1944.
In retrospect, rifle training in phy ed was odd. Not as odd as the “values clarification class” that was part of driver’s ed, but still. The 70s were a weird time.
I’m surprised how little the list has changed since my time in elementary school. I remember vividly having the 24 pack of crayons and lusting after the 64 pack, with the sharpener.
School prepares the list, gets the price, does the bulk order — from a specialist supplier, who divides it all up into individual boxes which the school distributes to each student — who takes it all to school again on first day, where the teacher pools it.
I guess it works ok. No complaints from the teachers. Different in the higher grades.
This is only an issue if all 25 kids need their pencils sharpened at the same exact moment. How likely is that?
I sympathize with the OP. During his elementary years, my kid went to an international school in Egypt which at the time (things may have changed since then) was very well resourced. Tuition fees were upwards of $20,000 annually.
Yet, the school always asked parents to provide paper towels. WTF? We’re paying a shitload of money to send our kid there, and you can’t find money in your budget for paper towels?
Schools are weird.
My kid does homeschool.
Explicitly required, yeah I am dumbfounded about it as well. I’d be more outraged if it was an inner city public school and not a public suburban school, though.
My understanding of talking to my kids teachers that have been on the verge of retirement is that kids behavior has changed a lot from when I was a kid. When I was a kid, the MAJORITY of kids who needed to sharpen a pencil got up to sharpen their pencil, did so quietly and efficiently, and went back to their seat.
Now, allowing kids to leave their seats apparently results in kids who wander the room, disturbing other kids, who may make their way to the pencil sharpener eventually and back to their desk eventually.
And telling them to go get their pencil sharpened and get back to their seat does the teacher no good. If they call home, they get “Austin has ADHD, of course he is wandering” where if my mother got a call home that said I was wandering the class instead of sharpening my pencil, I would have never wandered the classroom again (my mother went in for standing over you while you cleaned grout with a toothbrush or dusted spindly chair legs, she was also very good at being heartbroken over your transgressions).
So, it is easier for classroom management for everyone to have one of those little pencil sharpeners in their case where they don’t have an excuse to wander.
This seems like a situation where some clarification from the teacher may be in order. It makes sense to pool some of this stuff, but pencil pouches? That makes no sense at all.
The sprog went to middle school at the local Catholic school. His supply lists were usually oddly specific, but it all made sense when I saw that the red folders were supposed to match the red binder that went with the textbook that had the red tape on the spine. The green went with green, blue with blue, and so forth. That part was intended to teach basic organizational skills to prepare the kids for high school.
The rest - the paper, pencils, pens, tissues, and anything not in a set - were pooled so any child who needed it could have it. Anything that did come in a set or anything that was an individual item, like markers, colored pencils, or a pencil pouch, stayed with the student. I think the sprog still uses the pouch he got three years ago.
As far as things like pencil sharpeners go, anything in a classroom has to be capable of handling one pencil per student, possibly multiple times per day. A standard electric sharpener may be more efficient, but it’s also going to break, and when it does, it has to be replaced. Blades go dull and motors jam or wear out. I found a heavy-duty model for $45 that can handle 20 uses per day. A small sharpener costs a dollar and won’t be used more than once or twice a day. Which makes more sense - the $45 thing that would probably have to be replaced at least once during the year, or the one-dollar thing that can be replaced at will? The same for electric staplers, Scotch tape dispensers, and anything else. It’s far cheaper to have the students bring those in than for the teacher or school to buy them and have to replace them.
A very common thing with homework, particularly math, was to have the kids self-grade. The kids pass the homework to the student in front of them (and the front row passes to the back row) and the students grade their peers’ papers in red ink as the teacher goes over the answers. Its a great system for two reasons.
First, it reinforces the work that was done as the class goes over each problem. Students also get to see how others solved the same problems in different ways, or possibly made the same mistakes that they did.
Second, its more productive for the teacher and their lesson plans. There isnt as much homework to grade after class, freeing up their time for more important things. It also makes homework a more productive thing, as students can ask questions about specific problems while its still fresh in their minds, since they got their homework grade back immediately, rather than a day or two later. This also reduces the risk of students falling behind, as math often builds upon the previous lesson.
Of course they do. In the better schools around here, we ensure children learn the correct rules for firearms. It’s obvious when watching kids from other areas; they’re incapable of selecting a proper after-dinner weapon, and will blithely wear chromed pistols after Labor Day.
Answering the OP: When my kids were in elementary school, the local stores pre-assembled “Back to School” supply packets for each grade and teacher. We just went to the BTS aisle in Albertson’s/Walmart/etc., grabbed the package labeled “Mrs. Smith - 3rd Grade” and headed for checkout. The teachers compiled their lists early and the schools distributed them to the local stores in August.
While we’re on the subject, our school district had other smart policies that I remember:
Why would the pencil sharpener and stapler have to be electric? All we had for a pencil sharpener was the hand-crank one attached to the end of the blackboard. Same with the stapler, the teacher had a manual one in her drawer and we just had to ask to use it.
It seems to be the default, these days. When I was in school we all bought our own - but when my kids were in school we were given a detailed list. Sometimes it added up to a fair bit of money - which was certainly a hardship for some students. And yeah, my assumption was that the majority of the resources were pooled.
What really pissed me off was that once they were in high school, having the mandatory supplies was a part of your grade. Which sucked if your family couldn’t afford all the crap. I once read an argument about how that basically meant poorer families got poorer grades. And of course the kid is in 6-7 different classes, all of which had their own lists, and sometimes the lists that were available before the session started disagreed with the lists the teachers handed out.
One year, Moon Unit went to a different school, where they actually had an optional “buy your school supplies from us” option. I was thrilled. I spent maybe 20 dollars to participate - MUCH cheaper and easier.