Do Your Teachers (or Kids’ Teachers) Request School Supplies From Students?

That's funny! Just ask them! Mine have never had to buy the baggies, but they get a list of everything else we need. Only thing we are expected to contribute to the whole class is 2 boxes of tissues and a hand sanitizer.

This is a very good question. Did you ask? I wonder if they're used to cover the janitorial needs of the school. Or the cafeteria? (Are they taking food home?)

We don't have a cafeteria, we have a catered lunch system (we place the orders and pay for the food and the restaurant brings it-we order 1 month in advance) and brown bag lunch, which is what my daughter does.

The classrooms don't use them for projects, parents get called if there is a clothing accident, and daughter has never been able to tell us WHERE all those bags go.

Confusing isn't it? SO, I figure the teachers must put them in the teachers resource room, and use them from there to bring supplies, etc, from the resource center or media building.

Please see if you can get an answer. I'm very curious. I wonder if someone is using the bags for some community project. Something that a middle or high school club is involved with.

Good question. I will ask her when she comes home from camp on Friday.

I will also call my sister in law, she works at the school, maybe she will know. I have always wondered but I never ask, just figure they go somewhere.

we're all expected to have our own supplies and name them to prevent theft, we'd get detention if we didn't have our own supplies!

yes, and it's a same that some kids families are so poor that their children don't have any. It's great that people and organization chip in and help.

And some families just flat out refuse to buy any supplies. Cause they KNOW everyone else will.

That is just not right

Yes. That always killed me too. But, what's the alternative? It's the kids who suffer. And, it's good lesson for our own kids: Life is not fair, but there's this thing called "karma".

I wish our school would ask for donations. I have had extras and sent in, but they have never asked. We have many poor kinds here. I just assumed this nutty school penalized the kids who did not have school items. But I hoped my boy could share the extras I send in with him.

Many schools "pool" all of the supplies in a classroom, so that everyone has equal access.

not a half bad idea. Ours they buy their own and just mark w/ their name on it. Only pooled stuff is the kleenex and the hand sanitizer.

I have creative ways to mark my daughters supplies, so she can spot a thief in a second. But my daughters school doesn't pool-except the kleenex, paper towels, sanitizer.

Public schools pool, but that is an unfair burden on the families who do send in supplies, cause they have to pay twice, or more to keep enough supplies for all the kids.

My son is in public, and he just puts his name on all his items and they go into his little box. That is what the school requested. Only pooled items are the kleenex and the sanitizer.

I buy extras of the crayons and such and put those in his back pack and ask him to give them to the teacher to pass out to whoever needs them.

My daughter was in private, is now in charter and they supply everything. In private, our school list cost us over $600 on day 1 and this was not including uniforms...(they did not wear uniforms.) That school hit us up for everything, non stop and never allowed sharing of books or anything... all had to be bought from them... at their prices, even if they were not new. We were not allowed to buy the texts from Ebay or share... to next class. I gave my daughters books from one grade to another student who came into that grade following year and was hauled into the principals office for violating their money making rules. So much for a nice "Christian school", they were anything but Christian-like.

Our school is very different. They save all they can and have an oversight committee, and we pay tuition, buy supplies and periodically send in other stuff, but mostly, that is the cost.


Public schools here, send lists and requests and ask the public for donations, while the teachers unions are getting nearly everything for the teacher at no cost to them,. I really REALLY, HATE the teachers unions.

Your in Alabama... I am in Oregon. I am not going to say I am thrilled with every part of our school system here. But the problems I see are more w/ the PTA than anything else. They are the ones who are constantly trying to get money out of the parents and it gets old.

When my daughter was in the private school, they literally had fund raisers every 2 weeks, and the kids HAD to sell, or else. Here I was paying through the nose for my kid to be taught, and not learn to be nothing more than a door to door salesman. But that is what they did. $4 candles for $25 each, $2 wrapping paper for $18, it was ludicrous. And where did the money go? Not to the kids, but to the principal for her budget.

I guess we could bitch about schools all day long, but each one is different, public or private... so no matter. As long as you are happy with your children's quality of education, that is all that matters.

I hate the union for it's decision to RUIN the schools and teaching in order to protect their own benefits.

Plain and simple, TOO much is spent giving teachers free everything here, while NOT providing the things like new text books and visual aides that would enhance learning.

You hate the teachers' unions because they try to keep the teachers from buying school supplies out of THEIR OWN pockets?????

OK, so since food is so expensive, maybe their unions shouldn't fight an expectation that the workers in stores buy groceries for the shopping public. Or that cops should chip in for the costs of jails. Or that nurses should set up a fund for other people's meds.

Or that the people who haven't paid their fair taxes for the last 10 years (the still happening Bush-Cheney tax cuts, remember them?) that they should have to fork over a penny or two. Jeez!

Teachers here get an allowance and only have to buy what they WANT for decor that is not available thru their supplier. The teachers in this state are well taken care of, and the students suffer for it.


I DO think that everyone should pay a registration fee for school, to help cover the books. But until you live here and have to deal ALL of the crap the teachers union here does-don't criticize.

They spent MILLIONS to get a teachers union favorable governor, even though he is a lying disaster AS governor-except for them. They vilify any candidate for any office who wants to get testing, or accountability in the classrooms, and they control several large lobbying groups.

What state is this? None of this makes any sense.

Maybe you didn't mean to say this: but do you think the unions are responsible for buying the textbooks in your school system? And, are the unions supposed to buy any visual aids (like what? computers-on-wheels? smart boards? what?)

Really? The teachers vilify testing? That's what teachers do every day. And the teachers' union controls WHAT lobbying groups? The NEA or the AFT are themselves the lobbying group. This doesn't make any sense.

Abolish government-run education. Politics will fix itself in one generation, and Jersey Shore and the Kardashians will go away for good.

I agree, do away with bussing-an expensive and useless system now used to ferry 3 year olds to daycares, and kids that live 1 block away to the school yard.

Wait! You live in a community that has tax-payer busing for day care? huh? Where do you live?

Alabama and in our city, the school buses DO pick up and drop off at daycares. It PISSES me off.

Until this post, the only schools I knew about in Alabama were in Huntsville. (For any other reader, Huntsville is where NASA is located - and probably has more PHDs than anywhere else in the world.) I imagine their kids would be taken to pre-school by one of their parents on the way to work. Why would they put their babies on a bus? Are we kidding here?

I wasn't able to find any public school system / community in Alabama that has pre-school children going to "day care" on school buses. (Although, if such a program DOES exist, you can see why the bus would drop off the kids in front of their houses / complexes. We're talking babies here.) But, how in the world can your community afford this? Who's paying for this? Is this one of those programs for kids who are "impaired" in some way?

Something's not right here.

Oh this is a smart suggestion. And, where would this country be in 20 - 30 years? The responsible would get their kids educated one way or another, but what about the parents who couldn't or simply wouldn't? You want these milling hordes of uneducated people streaming into towns looking for food? To attack the kids who got an education? (And, I mean a REAL education.) Get real.

6 box of kleenex per child

I don't have kids in school anymore, but I have friends who do, and they have to deal with this...and many don't like it at all,,,,we pay enough taxes that schools should be able to budget for these things, and the parents should have to buy very little....just the
book buying is enough to put a person in the poor house, even used books....always seemed to me like a total rip off..

Not all your taxes go to schools. That's the only budget you may vote on, but your taxes pay for all those other government agencies - all their workers, all the operation costs, (gas and electric and sewerage), all the regulations they enforce, as well as the costs of police, fire persons, all the community social programs.

And, frankly, no kid should be paying for his books! Where in the world are you living?

Don't your schools have among other fees, Book Fees....
And in most High Schools during Check ins for the new school year in August, kids are there buying books for the new school year....they also, sell them back to the bookstore at the end of school...Most private schools are like this as well....

I realize the taxes we pay are for other things.....I have been doing this for quite a while....but a HUGE portion does go for the school district, and it doesn't matter if you have kids in school or not....they should be able to budget better and not ask for all this extra stuff...

Wait a minute! You have kids in your community going to public schools having to buy their textbooks???? TEXTBOOKS??? Where? That's against the law.

Which is stupid and gay, wow, I really hate this

They would ask us to get things that we would all use at some point. Hand sanitizer, tissues, paper towels, a package of pens or pencils ( for those who would forget ) and loose leaf paper. That type of thing.

are classes seem to always run out of tissues

Some of the stocking lists for schools are out front about the seemingly heavy load of crap being required, it is so that they can assist students who cannot afford the increasingly expensive and long list of required supplies.

When a supply list gets two pages long for a primary student, it is absurd.

12 YELLOW pencils, 48 Crayola Brand crayons, 10 plain colored spiral bound paper booklets, 48 pages long and so on, the detailed nature is also stupid, why CRAYOLA brand when Dollar General can mark on coloring books just fine?

because Rose Art brand is cheap, and doesn't have the color molecules.

Also because, peer pressure is such that any kid with Dollar Store supplies is made fun of, so in order to keep the classroom as free of BS as possible, CERTAIN name brands are all that are allowed.

It keeps Sally from the trailer park from being harassed by Janey from the upscale subdivision.

I buy the generics anyways... do my kids supply shopping at Big lots... and send half back in from the previous year that was never used anyways. :)

Actually, at the end of the year. But whatevs.

Lucky for us, I enrolled my son into a private intuition.