Which will really chap a high schooler’s ass considering you could go to McDonalds around here and get two double cheeseburgers, two apple pies, and a small drink for the same $4.00.
THANK GOD for open campus lunches!!!
Four Dollars? FOUR Dollars?! Even while in high school the basic lunch was $1.50 and had some of the following choices: sandwich and french fries; chef’s salad; a casserole; and slice of pizza.
You could get an extra sandwich or bag of french fries, if you were so inclined.
I feel as if I went to high school with Jesus, after reading this.
Snot in a bottle.
In MA you have a certain amount of choice in regards to public schools. There are a lot of variables though.
In the town I used to live in you ranked your choices when the child started first grade. If you had more than one child the following siblings generally got into the school that their older sibling attended.
Depending on your income level you can have your child change schools midstream if the MCAS scores for that school are below a certain level. I think this rule is crap though. Sorry the school sucks but you make too much money to get your kid a better education in the public system :rolleyes:
Oh and I am 30 and still have a few of my elemetary school pencil boxes. One of my favorites is a big purple crayon that is about 6 inches tall with the cover and still holds crayons to this very day. I don’t know how it survived this long but it has If my kids want sparkly pencil boxes well they shall have them.
More and more I wonder if homeschooling isn’t a better option for my kids. I’d pick a private school except they all are affiliated with a church around here.
To Guin…my belief is children are impressionable. Yes, I think communal pots are dangerous because of the idea that no one can have something more or better than anyone else (see MamaTiger’s post about 8 vs 16 crayons.) We all don’t have the same stuff. I’m sure you guys drive better cars than I do. Shall I demand that the gov’t supply me the same car you have? No. I need to save my money and buy my own car. The sooner children learn that lesson the happier they’ll be, because they will learn to get stuff by earning it, and not because someone gave it to them. Call me a libertarian crackpot, but there you are.
Zoe, I never said I didn’t support the teachers. I know they are overworked and underpaid. I don’t make my daughter sign the compact, and if the teacher didn’t sign it, it’s no big deal to me. I just think it’s insulting that they would expect me to sign it to prove I’m going to help my child with her studies. From what I understand from my daughter’s teacher last year, they are pretty :rolleyes: about it too, but it’s required by the federal gov’t.
And I still can’t believe they wanted a bag of candy.
And let me just ditto how interesting this thread is!
Oh one other way to choose a different school than the one that services the district you live in. Daycare.
My brother went to a different school than I did because his daycare was in a different district. I know some moms who specifically picked daycare to get their kids in certain schools.
I guess it is a certain amount of selfishness coming out. If they asked for 10 pencils to be added to a comminity pot, that wouldn’t be too bad. Pencils are pencils. But other stuff like crayons and scissors and highlighters and glue sticks really vary in quality, and if I’m buying the good stuff for my child, I want to be sure he’s the one using it. When you have kids of your own, you do want them to have good school supplies.
Obviously though, if the kid sitting next to my child needs to borrow something for a few minutes, my child has been raised to say, “Sure, here you go” rather than shrieking, “NO! IT’S MINE! ALL MINE!”
And yes, my kids do have plenty of “stuff” of their own. My unmarried and child-free SIL works at K-Mart and still lives at home (rent-free), so she has plenty of disposable income to spoil her niece and nephew with. Trust me, they have lots of stuff. She spoils them really well. :rolleyes:
Oh, and count me in with the office-supply addicts, too. For me the biggest thing is pens. I just love blue roller balls. Gotta be medium-points, though. And they’re kinda hard to find.
I can’t afford it right now, but I’ve often thought that private school might be a good thing… except that I’ll rot in hell before I send my child to a religious school. 
So, are schools trying to physically deform children as they grow up? I swear, in the last few years, I’ve noticed kids carrying monstrous backpacks to and from school. Some of them even need those rolling airplane suitcases to carry all the crap around. And I’m not talking high school kids, these look like 2nd-5th graders. What’s changed in the last decade that requires so many kids to carry big backpacks stuffed full of, well, stuff?? Are they all going to grow up with deformed shoulders because of the weight?
There were some studies a few years back quoting that kids shouldn’t carry more than (I believe) 5-10% of their body weight in books, or else it could cause problems with their backs growth. More important than from class to class, is the walk home. Class to class can be irritating, but the walk home could be a half an hour with 25 pounds on your back!!
My son just started kindergarten yesterday.
Outside of a backpack and lunch box ( $20 total from Old Navy) that was it for my back to school shopping. Plus a sympathy mini back pack for my daughter - $6.
Which is a total shame, for I am addicted to office supplies. Anything, notebooks, pens (oh! the pens!), sticky notes, rubber bands ( can’t ever have too many of those, can we?) and, did I mention that when the school supplies start trickling out in July, I go absolutely batshit and buy notebooks like it was crack on sale for a dime?
Hijack alert
I probably have four boxes of standard spiral notebooks in my basement for the kids “art projects”. ( at 5 and 3, they are quite the production line for art.) Several years ago a local Mega-lo-Mart was putting out their school supplies for the start of the Season. Notebooks were three cents apiece. NO LIMIT. Fuck if I didn’t buy all those cases in that positively orgasmic moment. I should have bought the wad, if you know what I mean, then I could just make a little desk out of those boxes and just bask in my score. yet, never use them
Did I mention that I still have notebooks from (cough) 1981 (cough) Harrison Ford on the cover as Indiana Jones. Can’t bear to write on those. I am pathetic, but happy in my dorkdom.
[/spazziness]
Ivylass, I’ve read enough of your posts to know that you are a caring person. But what is there to be insulted about when the letter goes to everyone and the teachers don’t even know you? I’m certain no insult was intended.
Some of you have brought back a sweet memory for me. Very early in the school year when I was in the first grade (age six), we needed crayons. A pretty little blond at my table broke hers in half to give to me. I broke that in half to give it to the cute young man on my right. That was the beginning of friendships that lasted through high school. The night that I graduated high school, I slept over with the pretty blond. And the little boy was one of the first to ask me out when we were teenagers.
Of course, it was all done voluntarily and that is what makes the memory so dear.
Another college student checking in about you whiny parents and school supplies. I am extremely lucky this term to only be buying books for three of my classes. And yet, I spent $500+ on books alone, two days ago. (And I’m really pissed about the $186 Engineering Statistics book. By all accounts the class sucks. $80 for an ethical theory text? Sure, but spare me from overpriced, poorly written, makework babble.) No matter what I do, every term its $100/class.
Add to that the regular, fun school supplies like notebooks and binders. All on my annual income of ~$6000. I wish I could budget $50 on the school books and $500 dollars on the glorified art supplies rather than the other way around. As it is I take engineering notes in multi colored calligraphy or metallic gel pens because I can. (And yes, my classmates think I’m nuts.)
Wow, I spend 1/6 of my yearly income on textbooks. No wonder I can’t eat.
Please, someone adopt me…
Well, I would, but technically that might get a little… weird. 
Oh, Zoe, that’s a very sweet story.
You’re right, I am probably overreacting when it comes to the compact. After all, there are 35+ kids in the classroom, they don’t know me from Adam. I just have very little patience when it comes to our local school system. That’s why I got one kid into private school and am working on the other one.
But I will not sign that compact, and I will be very happy to explain why to any teachers who ask.
After mentioning my complaint to someone yesterday, I was told that (at least in some schools), it’s cool to carry around everything possible in your backpack. Allegedly most of the kids don’t need to lug around all their books, they just do it to look cool.
Has anyone else heard confirmation of this theory? And what’s going through the mind of 3rd graders if they think looking like the Hunchback of Jansport is going to make them cool??
I carried all my books because there wasn’t enough time to get from class to locker to bus so I could get home. It was considered ‘cool’ to have as few books as humanly possible and portray that air of ‘studying is for geeks.’
I guess I’ve been out of school longer than I thought!
Another teacher here.
Okay, first, I taught Algebra and required TI-83+ calculators for the following reasons:
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The county required curriculum did all of it’s examples in that particular calculator, and me, the “I went through college and got a degree in physics with my solar power scientific calculator”, only had to learn to use that kind of calculator. I’m glad that others have found “superior” calculators, but when they don’t work, I don’t know how to fix them.
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My classes used them daily, and I didn’t have a class set.
For my class this year [and I now teach in private school, so they buy everything book wise], I required: -
The text book
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A three ring binder and paper
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A composition book [a bound book for lab]
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Lab goggles
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Something to write with.
That’s it. But, remember that teachers spend an obscene amount of their own money. I have a friend who teaches catholic, low-income elementary school, and she gets $75 a year for supplies for all 25 of her kids - and the rest is out of pocket. Teachers spend [even highschool teachers] sometimes $1000-2000 a year on just supplies of their own money. We get to deduct $250 off our income taxes.
Now, some of your requests do seem oddly complex, but before you assume the teacher is out to screw the parents, call and ask what it’s for.
My youngest son is starting middle school (sixth grade) this year, in a public school. This is from the letter I received recently from the school about the upcoming orientation: “During this meeting, students are able to purchase their gym uniform, school lock [for the gym lockers] and [Name of School] Assignment Book for a discounted price of $47.” (Emphasis added by me. They are required to purchase these items at some point before the end of the first week of school; this is their opportunity to beat the rush!) If all I were required to spend was $47, I would not mind so much. I know from experience, though – my older son is in this school – that this is just the beginning. Every single teacher will have his or her own list of supplies the first day of school.
As to the stupidest school supply – what drove me crazy when my boys were in elementary school was that some of the teachers were very rigid in their requirements, and the children would get in trouble when their parents could not find something on the list. This seemed especially unfair when – as sometimes happened – the item in question was described in a vague way, making the shopping process difficult. For example, the list that my older son’s fifth grade teacher handed out included “1 Dark Colored Pen for Corrections.” They were already required to have a blue or black pen for writing, so I figured that a red pen was the best choice “for Corrections.” Luckily for my son, I was right. Some parents, though, bought pens in a different “Dark Color” (for example, purple) and their children were yelled at for not having the correct color pen! Arrgh.
When my younger son had this same teacher, she added this to her list of 23 items: “Strip hole puncher – used for punching holes for work to be included in loose leaf – do not purchase large, hard metal one.” (Underlining in original list.) I had no idea what she was talking about, and neither did the clerk at the store. (I finally figured it out, but not after I first bought a hard metal one – the “wrong” kind!)
BTW, calling the teacher for clarification was not really an option in elementary school. The kids would be given the supply list on the last day of school in June and were then expected to show up on the first day of school in September with all the correct supplies.
Part of the problem with the school supply issue is that school budgets keep getting cut, so there’s less and less money available for quality equipment and supplies. Naturally, it falls on the parents then to supply the goods. Why this whole issue is so shameful and criminal in my opinion is a whole 'nother rant for a whole 'nother thread.
That said, I’m trying to remember what was provided in elementary school. To the best that I remember, it was dang near everything, except for rulers, pencils, and the like. I also recall that for some damn reason, I was not allowed to use a pen until high school, which was frustrating as hell. Except in certain limited situations, a pen is a FAR better writing tool than a pencil.
The school I currently attend (entering senior year) tends to provide fairly extensive lists, particularly for the lower grades. For the last two years, it isn’t too bad. Obvious basics like paper, pens and pencils, math supplies like a ruler and the ever important graphing calculator. The calculators ARE extremely useful and effective tools, and without them things would be merely more tedious and time consuming. I know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, but given the sort of alegebraic problems we need to work with, I have better things to do with my time then taking the 20 minutes to work through all the multiplication, long division and deriving square roots required to solve ONE problem. Graphing aside, most of the math we do is a very involved, multi-step process. Calculators do the grunt work that I already know how to do faster, getting it out of the way so I focus on the entire problem.
Anyway, for this year, I’m formulating a new, cheap plan. I have binders and paper left over from last year, so I intend to use as many of these as I can. I may switch over to a different plan, relying on a folder and a spiral notebook for each class, since I also have scads of each of those. The Master Plan is to cut down as much as possible on the weight I have to carry. Fortunately, textbooks are only necessary in some science classes at my school, so life is easy for me!