I donated a bunch of spiral notebooks, looseleaf paper, and pens that I had stored up. Dropped them off at a local bank that is collecting them for needy kids.
Is this for real? It never occurred to me that school supplies cost that much.
Needs Grow With School Supply Lists
Nonprofits Help When Parents Can't Cope, but Some Children Must Go Without
By Abhi Raghunathan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 26, 2002; Page B03
Remember when shopping for school supplies meant rounding up a notebook and a pencil? Now that's just the start of a long, expensive quest.
Back-to-school lists these days include computer disks and calculators, super-size boxes of crayons and enough writing implements to equip an army of CPAs.
Even the basics are no longer so basic, nor are they consistent from school to school. First-graders at Carlin Springs Elementary School in Arlington County are asked to bring sharpened No. 2 pencils, while at Whitman Middle School in Fairfax County, mechanical pencils are preferred.
What's more, parents must shop for items for the class to share, purchasing boxes of tissue and bottles of hand sanitizer.
It adds up to a hefty bottom line: close to $450 per household, according to the National Retail Federation.
For many parents, it's not just a shock, it's a strain on their pocketbooks.
"My 5-year-old is going to kindergarten, and they have to have hefty Ziploc freezer bags," said Kimberly Carter, 26, an unemployed mother of three who lives in Alexandria. "It makes it harder. . . . It's just stressful."
To help families cope, a growing number of churches and civic organizations are helping fill children's book bags.
"The lists are getting longer, and they're getting more specific," said Sarah Tucker, director of community education for Howard County's Domestic Violence Center, which runs such a program. "If they don't have exactly what's on the list, then we try to work with them."
Years ago, schools didn't use calculators or computer disks the way they do now. But advances in technology have filtered into the primary grades, meaning a bigger tab for mom or dad.
"Parents say there's usually too much to buy," said Karen Morisato, a social worker at Samuel W. Tucker Elementary School in Alexandria. "With the larger families, with three or four kids, it can add up."
One of the bigger supply drives is run by radio station WTOP, Potomac Electric Power Co. and SunTrust Bank. Their campaign targets schools with a high percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches.
"Whether they're getting every single thing they need is hard to say," said Tony Crosby, director of office supply operations for Fairfax County public schools, the region's largest system. "Does it give them the specific brand name that someone says they have to have? Probably not. But what we do get helps these kids a lot."
The Fairfax County Sheriff's Association pitched in by taking about 40 children shopping Saturday, giving each $100 for school supplies.
The association has sponsored the event for nearly a decade, but the problem is not widely known.
"A lot of people were surprised that so many people needed it," said Mike Clark, a coordinator of Christ Episcopal Church Link, who works with a school-supply drive in Howard County that will help about 1,400 children this year, with 1,600 others still in need.
"We can't supply everything, but we can supply most of it" for some children, he said. But "there are kids who presumably will need supplies and are not going to get them."
Parents who can afford it often cannot do more than shrug and spend.
"I wish it would cost less -- everything is going up, up, up," said Pedro Villatoro, 36, a maintenance worker living in Falls Church. He expects to spend $150 to $170 on his third-grader's supplies.
In Southern Maryland, the Charles County Children's Aid Society provided supplies to 887 students this year, up 220 percent from 2001, largely because of lingering effects from a devastating tornado and an apartment-building fire in the county this year.
"Children need to have the proper tools to learn, and we hope our program enables them to learn. It reduces the embarrassment level these children may feel," said Kristy S. Over, executive director of the agency, which has operated the program for seven years.
In Alexandria, supply drop-off boxes have been set up in churches and businesses as part of a drive, now in its 11th year, by the Community Partners for Children nonprofit group.
"A lot of these kids show up for school and they don't have anything," said Elise Reeder, an Alexandria resident who volunteers to pick up the boxes. Donations are down this year, she said. "The whole giving environment is tighter than it was previously. I think people are concerned about economics, about jobs."
Staff writer Colleen Jenkins contributed to this report.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company |
