This week’s syndicated Super-Couponing Tips column is entitled “Readers share school supply tales.” Here’s an excerpt:
“Every year the list of supplies that my elementary school son needs to bring gets longer and longer. This year my son’s third grade class list requires 16 glue sticks. There are 26 kids in his class. That’s 416 glue sticks for one classroom. Is it even possible to use that many in nine months’ time? I brought this up at registration and I was told that not every kid could afford school supplies, so the list requires more supplies than the room needs.”
Read this entire column at NWItimes.com.
My Super-Couponing Tips column appears in newspapers around the country to a weekly readership of over 20 million people! Learn more about my column’s syndication at this link.
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karen says
I taught elementary school in inner city Detroit for many years. I once worked in a building that didn’t supply toilet paper. I bought toilet paper every week for my class. I often asked the parents to send in extra crayons, pencils, paper etc. My advice to parents who are irritated by the requests for extra supplies is to simply not send them in. As far as pooling supplies, it is mich easier to manage . When some one needs a glue stick I can give them a new one rather than keep track of 30 individual packages of 6 glue sticks.
Kari O. says
If you don’t feel like buying all of the supplies listed then don’t. It’s simple. You can also go onto the list of parents who don’t contribute and then the next years parents will be asked to being 17 glue sticks. lol
Last year my daughters kindergarten class asked for 48 glue sticks all together broken down in 6ct packages. I thought it was absurd until the teacher explained Kindergarteners supply glue sticks for K-2 grades. And then I noticed we weren’t asked to buy Pencils or erasers. This year we were asked to get 60 pre-sharpened pencils to cover K-2. And next year we get to buy tons of Pink Erasers.
As ridiculous as the lists seem, they are carefully chosen and aim to aleve the financial burden of our over worked and under paid educators. Last year I scored huge on 90% off BTS Clearance at Target, so I graciously replenished the supply closet before the end of school and before my daughters teacher had to dip into her own pocket. Plus my BTS stockpile jump started this years BTS shopping and I have only had to pick up Pencils and a new binder. lol
Coupon Maven says
Thanks for the info on the different grades sharing supplies with each other — that’s something I had not heard of before. I imagine that if that perspective were shared with / pointed out to the parents, it could calm some of the emotions I’ve been getting from readers via email.
I too love to grab great deals both on the back-to-school loss leaders and the post-season clearance — at our kids’ orientations I told their teachers just to let me know what they needed if they started to run out of anything, because I’ve been buying the limit on whatever the deal du jour is. Glue sticks limit 6? Okay then. Notebooks limit 10? You bet. :)