Posted on 08/24/2011 9:50:09 AM PDT by Libloather
A lesson in finance: Parents, teachers prepare for back-to-school expenses
By Megan Hart | The Muskegon Chronicle
Updated: Monday, August 22, 2011, 10:14 AM
**SNIP**
Handing out the list early gives parents a chance to hit the sales, minimizing costs, Beal said, and the school still buys supplies so students who can't afford them aren't left behind.
“If they have tough times, we'll make sure they get what they need,” she said.
At North Muskegon Elementary, the youngest students need relatively few supplies for personal use, but are asked to contribute items to the class, such as colored paper, plastic bandages, safety pins, pencils, tissues and toilet paper.
“We've always done it that way,” North Muskegon Elementary Principal Mitri Zainea said. “It has helped our budget significantly over the years.”
Sarah VanTine sees back-to-school shopping from both sides – and both are costing her.
She teaches kindergarten at Calvary Christian Schools in Fruitport, where her daughter is starting ninth grade. Other than a graphing calculator, her daughter mostly needs inexpensive things, like a sturdy backpack and binders, she said.
She buys some art supplies for the little ones with her own money, but is asking parents to contribute disinfecting wipes and other cleaning supplies.
“Otherwise, that comes out of our pocket,” VanTine said. “There's so many cutbacks that teachers have to do a lot of their own cleaning.”
She said she sympathizes with parents who have to buy for large families. The little ones want folders and backpacks with their favorite characters instead of the cheaper, plain ones, and older kids need expensive calculators.
“It's something that you cringe at when they get into the upper level math,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at mlive.com ...
We haven’t been asked YET for toilet paper! I do provide the tissues, hand sanitizer and hand soap that they request. I’m not thrilled with it but I would rather the kids (who are sick) have the tissues and soaps... I get them at the Dollar Stores and hope that it keeps the illnesses down a bit. Just a thought.
Meanwhile, six-figure salaried and pensioned Administrators go about their 2-hour lunches and seminars in 5-star resorts, right on schedule.
Always, “da chid’ren” never the overpaid, underworked and overpensioned teachers and adminstrators and their Unions who kill budgets.
You would not BELIEVE the $hit we have to buy each year. Here’s a dirty, little secret. If you get a chance, go into the classroom storage rooms in the elementary schools. Ours was chocked FULL of leftovers. Waste. Each year they ask for more and more. When I went to elementary, all I brought was a spiral notebook, loose leaf paper, and a pack of pencils and a ruler. That was IT! Now it’s everything from hand sanitizer to white board markers. The schools need to start buying wholesale and let the parents pay the wholesale price.
On the other hand, many of these are “underprivileged.” They pay no local taxes other than sales tax, yet enroll several children at the taxpayers’ expense. If you can get anything out of them, it’s a plus.
However, it’s much more likely that their children will appear at school sometime during the first week of classes, without so much as a pencil. Many simply walk in and say, “Where are my supplies?” or as one put it to me, “Where’s my free stuff?”
The parent flips a cigarette out of the window of a car newer than the teacher’s as they come to pick up their student at the end of the day. America, what a country.
The schools need to fire the Deputy Assistant Superintendent in charge of being the woman living with a school board member and buy toilet paper, markers, and anything else a real business would provide. Students should bring their own personal supplies for their own use.
I buy my kids the required items only, I figured I “contributed” enough to the class when I paid thousands of dollars in property tax every year, of which 75% is suppose to go too schools.
Get rid of the teachers unions, but eventually we are going to have to face the fact that it’s the lack of parenting that brought us to where we are in the educational system today. Many of the suburban school districts around the country produce great educational results despite the interference of the unions. I challenge anyone to find me an inner-city school that has a majority of students that are literate or capable of doing long division. These schools don’t exist anymore, because government has assumed the role of father in these communities. Those who are not members of certain ethnic groups are reluctant to mention these facts. While inner-city schools in the 50s were not exactly superb, they were far better than they are today, before the government started with its War on Poverty. Student performance has also fallen steadily since the federal Department of Education was created.
“graphing calculator”
Worthless waste of money.
Why on EARTH does this woman’s daughter’s school require a graphing calculator in 9th grade? I did three semesters of college calculus before I needed one of those!
Supplies?
If only. What about the free breakfast and lunch I buy OTHER PEOPLES KIDS everday?
THAT needs to be addressed.
“Students should bring their own personal supplies for their own use. “
The Welfare Class disagrees with you. Why should they pay for school? Someone else should pay for it.
Around here, the churches pay for the supplies. The churches think they are giving the poor “dignity” but the opposite is true. They are proving that the poor don’t care about education enough to buy school supplies.
My kids got them at school. But if you lose it, you have to fork over $100. Unless you are in the Welfare Class and then screw it. Not going to happen.
It’s a good way to keep graphing calculators as expensive as possible.
But - again - they aren’t teaching math that requires a graphing calculator. Most high school level math is better done with a scientific calculator and knowing how to solve the problem, not a graphing calculator.
WITH OVER A $TRILLION INCREASE IN SPENDING (EACH YEAR~!!!) WHY ARE SCHOOLS GOING BEGGING???
They should be farting through golden silk with the money we are spening
It’s a mystery to me.
“”When I went to elementary, all I brought was a spiral notebook, loose leaf paper, and a pack of pencils and a ruler. That was IT! Now it’s everything from hand sanitizer to white board markers.””
I was reading this and trying to remember THAT LONG AGO! We went to elementary school with pencils in a pencil box and I believe that was it.
For junior high - probably the same thing along with a notebook and notebook paper. Same with high school.
NEVER was a list sent home to tell a parent what they needed to provide to the school for the classroom.
You know what? That was when we were there for an education and got it! Somewhere along the line, someone decided that schools were better run as dictatorships..
We didn’t need anyone to tell us what we needed to have to carry our books in. We carried them in our arms and that was even when we had to walk to and from school. What slobs we must have been to be so ignorant of what it took to get an education.
My biggest problem in high school was getting my tenor sax home to practice with an armload of books but I did it.
If parents today know they have to provide supplies for their own children, other people’s children and for the school as a whole, why aren’t they shopping for the best deals all year long? I’ve heard parents just recently talk about supplies running out in the stores because everyone is out shopping. No kidding!!
Not saying everyone needs one, but my oldest is in advanced classes and once they figured out how to do it on paper they moved to using the calculator to speed up the follow-on steps. It’s a tool like any other - you either learn to use it or you don’t.
Of course I had an older one that she used for a while - until I needed it back. (thought I’d have a mutiny on my hands for a bit there)
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