AS SUMMER ENDS, TIME FOR THE BACK-TO-SCHOOL SHOPPING BLUES
A forum to share best practices would be help parents avoid stressful situations
It’s the end of summer vacation for school-aged children, a fact some parents might gleefully choose to celebrate. On the flip side of the celebration is surviving the sharp learning curve as parents try their darnedest to complete their children’s backto-school supply list by the first day of classes this week.
Back-to-school shopping is a rite of passage for parents. For some, it can prove to be stressful, time-consuming and costly. However, you can make the best of it by turning it into a bonding exercise. Perhaps have a family treasure hunt for key items. Who will be the first to spot the spiral quad notebook as requested on the Grade 4 supply list?
It can also be a teaching moment for the kids. Ask them to compare prices at big box outlets or to read packaging and labels. Are you sure those are the correct HB No. 2 graphite pencils?
Some items on the supply list are now deemed optional, but recommended, from calculators to tissue boxes to even pencil cases, in certain cases. Seems to me pencil cases would be a staple item for grade schoolers, but I’m not a professional educator, so it is not my place to judge.
And when you arrive at the check out, how is it that you can get several glue sticks for a $1 each and 80-page lined notebooks and Duo-Tangs for 10 cents each, yet a back to school shopping spree for two children still ends up costing over $100? And that $100, for some parents, doesn’t include the purchase of the electronic tablet required for a particular enriched program.
Over the years, I’ve experienced different systems offered at West Island public schools when it comes to back-to-school supply-list purchasing. One Pointe-Claire school supplied everything — from pencils to notebooks — for students in kindergarten to Grade 3. The cost would be included in the school fees paid at the start of the year. With this system, parents had no shopping to do and teachers could pick the exact supplies they wanted for their classrooms.
Another local school’s home and school association offered its parents the option to purchase supplies from a warehouse company, with orders to be placed by mid-July in order to be ready for the start of classes. This “schoolsupply shopping made easy” option also acted as a fundraiser for some school-related activities. Although it was deemed as an efficient option, parents using the order form missed out on bargain hunting. Glue sticks, using this option, cost $2.90 each. The option did allow for some flexibility. Parents could order only what they wanted, opting to reuse items (scissors) from previous years, or could shop for part of the supply list on their own. For parents not into price matching or shopping for a specific brand of spiral notebooks, the warehouse pick-upyour-box-of-supplies-at-school option was a godsend.
In a perfect world, parents should be able to send their children to public schools without worrying about last-minute shopping for supplies, wondering if they purchased the correct items, or stressing because they weren’t able to find a reasonably priced three-ring, three-inch binder. Giving parents supply options is reasonable. They should not be left to scramble on their own to acquire the back-toschool items on their child’s list.
Perhaps it would be a good idea for local school administrators, governing boards and parents to organize a forum to share best practices for coping with back to school supply lists.