Back to school kids!

According to a recent USA Today article the average money spent on back to school items including clothes is 849-dollars for this school year. This includes all school supplies required to begin school. Computer and construction Paper, pin, pencil, folders, and note books, calculators, art supplies, Kleenex, Tylenol, etc. Everything for a teacher to run a classroom full of busy and sniveling kids. Yes it can add up.

What I don’t understand at all is a school system does have its own purchasing procedures as well. Already out there buying supplies. Supplies schools buy at wholesale bought in one fell swoop.

None the less, schools anyway issuing long lists of required supplies for each parent to purchase. Items purchased from most big box stores or office supplies stores. All intended to buy at RETAIL. Costing each parent 20 to 30-percent more than schools could easily buy at wholesale. No parent should be out driving around town looking for the right items usually in a car full of fussy kids.

Perhaps I grew up in a perverse generation but here is the way it was when I was in K through 12. We brought nothing to school. It was all there when we arrived back in school in the early fall. The exception was in junior and senior high where we had to provide our own note books, pen, pencil, and lined paper. Maybe a ruler and eraser. But the bulk of school supplies and text books were provided by each school I had attended and was paid for by our county or property taxes. A more efficient way of buying and distributing things.

So all I had to do is show up in my brand new Sears blue jeans, striped T-shirt, and sneakers along with a quarter in my pocket for a cafeteria hot lunch. Oh so easy.