Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Is this even legal? I'm in a low-income district and we are not even allowed to charge for lab fees, art supplies, or workbooks. We even give some students school supplies when their parents can't or won't.
Evidently. And what really gets me is that the school district recently banned chocolate milk in the lunch room and parents are throwing a huge hissy-fit over it - protesting and calling the district and going to meetings and talking to the media and posting on facebook. Yet... you never hear anything about parents being upset or angry about anything else regarding the school district here. Forget cursive, who cares about real math, who needs smaller classroom sizes, it's OK if you fire our specialists and lay off IA's, let's close some more neighborhood schools, get rid of school buses, but NO WAY to the chocolate milk! Don't touch our kids chocolate milk!
You have to laugh. Crying is the only other option really, and I hate my kids to see me cry.
Does anyone else reuse supplies from previous years? We do. I keep a big tub in the garage. This year I was even able to trade with a friend - she had things my kids needed and I had things her kids needed so it was a perfect trade. We only had to buy a few things... like tissues and copier paper.
I've had kids in school for a total of 17 years now (altogether) and I've never had a single teacher complain that we reused or recycled school supplies from previous years. I do it to save money, but also I find buying them to be very wasteful. SO much packaging and crap, you know?
Are your lists really so specific that they ask for a brand of eraser? I've never had a teacher complain because we bought the white rubber eraser rather than the pink pearl. That's insane!
I did have one teacher ask for a specific brand of crayons, because she said the Crayolas held up all year while the Rose Art ones did not. Don't know if that's true, but I found the Crayolas on sale at Target right after school started for 10c a pack, so I bought 50 packages of them. She was happy, I've spent $5 in far stupider ways, and it was all good.
Does anyone else reuse supplies from previous years? We do. I keep a big tub in the garage. This year I was even able to trade with a friend - she had things my kids needed and I had things her kids needed so it was a perfect trade. We only had to buy a few things... like tissues and copier paper.
I've had kids in school for a total of 17 years now (altogether) and I've never had a single teacher complain that we reused or recycled school supplies from previous years. I do it to save money, but also I find buying them to be very wasteful. SO much packaging and crap, you know?
Some stuff. Calculators, pens, rulers, things like that. Partial packages of paper get kept, of course. And I'm finally using up some of the supplies I bought three years ago when they were massively on sale. Of course, now I have about 30 prong folders that I just bought at a penny each, which will take me awhile to use...it all works out eventually.
Quote:
Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf
Evidently. And what really gets me is that the school district recently banned chocolate milk in the lunch room and parents are throwing a huge hissy-fit over it - protesting and calling the district and going to meetings and talking to the media and posting on facebook. Yet... you never hear anything about parents being upset or angry about anything else regarding the school district here. Forget cursive, who cares about real math, who needs smaller classroom sizes, it's OK if you fire our specialists and lay off IA's, let's close some more neighborhood schools, get rid of school buses, but NO WAY to the chocolate milk! Don't touch our kids chocolate milk!
You have to laugh. Crying is the only other option really, and I hate my kids to see me cry.
CHocolate milk protests seem pretty silly. OTOH, I doubt many parents have any clue that they've laid off instructional aides, and probably most have no idea what you mean by "real math" (as opposed to imaginary numbers?). Classroom sizes are a HUGE issue here. They were voted in as a constitutional amendment (state constitution, that is) but the legislature and governore keep eating away at it anyway. Quite the political issue.
I did have one teacher ask for a specific brand of crayons, because she said the Crayolas held up all year while the Rose Art ones did not. Don't know if that's true, but I found the Crayolas on sale at Target right after school started for 10c a pack, so I bought 50 packages of them. She was happy, I've spent $5 in far stupider ways, and it was all good.
Crayola brand is indeed far superior to Rose Art. It's not worth the little bit of savings to buy the cheaper one there because you'll have to replace them halfway through... not to mention Rose Art crayons color like crap! lol
We reuse some things. Crayons they get new because they are so cheap and it's just too fun to start out with fresh ones. haha
Colored pencils get dumped into a big bucket and we dig through it at the start of the next year to pick out what to take. Same with pencils and pens.
Scissors, rulers, pencil sharpeners, pencil bags/boxes, backpacks and more get used until they don't hold up anymore.
I cannot believe that anyone still pays so much money for supplies, minus things like calculators, these days when they are run on sale really cheap during July/Aug......
We don't have that many fees but a parking pass is $170.00 for the year. Yes you read that correctly. Lunch pass is $20.00, yearbooks around $100.00. Of course these are all optional. We've split these 50/50 with our kids they have all had part time jobs.
Yikes! Parking pass here is $5. Yearbook $65.
Quote:
Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf
Does anyone else reuse supplies from previous years? We do. I keep a big tub in the garage. This year I was even able to trade with a friend - she had things my kids needed and I had things her kids needed so it was a perfect trade. We only had to buy a few things... like tissues and copier paper.
I've had kids in school for a total of 17 years now (altogether) and I've never had a single teacher complain that we reused or recycled school supplies from previous years. I do it to save money, but also I find buying them to be very wasteful. SO much packaging and crap, you know?
When DS was little the teachers would always send extras home so we did use leftovers. I've heard of some places not returning things like scissors, etc., and people having to buy them every year which is ridiculous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aconite
I did have one teacher ask for a specific brand of crayons, because she said the Crayolas held up all year while the Rose Art ones did not. Don't know if that's true, but I found the Crayolas on sale at Target right after school started for 10c a pack, so I bought 50 packages of them. She was happy, I've spent $5 in far stupider ways, and it was all good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hypocore
Crayola brand is indeed far superior to Rose Art. It's not worth the little bit of savings to buy the cheaper one there because you'll have to replace them halfway through... not to mention Rose Art crayons color like crap! lol
I will agree that Crayola is better. We had teachers request that specifically as well and I can see why.
A $5. parking pass? Nice! We paid $100.00 last year, and they were only available to seniors. Senior class dues were $80.00, and the yearbook was $85. I didn't order the cap and gown, because we had one from the year before, but that was $35.00.
I still think public education is a bargain.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
