Letter: What’s with all these school supplies?

For the past few years I’ve had kids in an East Baton Rouge Parish elementary school.

At the beginning of each year, the school posts a list of supplies I’m supposed to purchase and send to school with each child.

Each year the list grows longer and more expensive. Yet, no one ever explains why some of these supplies are needed and what happens to them. I think it’s past time for someone from the School Board to step up and answer my concerns, which are the concerns of every other parent.

For instance, our elementary school has 32 teachers, pre-kindergarten through fifth, with at least 25 kids per class. That’s about 800 kids.

Each child is required to bring a box of Kleenex tissue. What does the school do with 800 boxes of Kleenex tissue?

Each child brings a roll of paper towels? Eight hundred rolls of paper towels? Setting aside consideration about how a school could possibly use 800 rolls of paper towels, where do they store this hoard?

Each child brings a box of Ziploc plastic bags. (Girls bring quart-size bags and boys bring gallon-size bags. Why the difference?)

At, say, 25 bags per box that’s 12,000 Ziploc plastic bags! Where and how are 12,000 Ziploc bags used?

It gets better. This year, one of my kids has to bring a dishpan to school! Is he going to be learning how to hand-wash dishes? OK, sounds like something I might agree with.

As I said, it’s past time for a representative of the School Board to step up and tell us, the parents who are required to hunt down, to purchase and to supply all of this stuff, just what happens to it all! I mean, is it being boxed up and sent out the back door, as a goodwill gesture to Third World countries?

Seriously, I call on someone from the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board to tell us why all of this stuff is needed.

Wayne Sanchez

laborer

Baton Rouge

Comments

1) Comment by twinkie1cat - 24/07/2012

So Country: You are going to tell a little kid he can't have a Kleenex or a pencil because his mama is a drunk? How about the foster child and the homeless kid who sleeps in the car? Yes it is true that some of the kids don't bring their supplies and with school starting in mid August some won't have money to get them until the first week in September. But I found that my parents who were most faithful to bring them were the poor parents because they did not want their child to be embarrassed and because they valued education. A middle class mother in Ascension who always smelled of cigarettes, sometimes of booze and who wore make-up like Tammy Faye Bakker, she was the one who often did not bring stuff until my paraprofessional, who handled her well, reminded her.

2) Comment by twinkie1cat - 24/07/2012

8point6: Those are mostly academic supplies---pencils, folders, etc for kids who cannot afford them. They are not hygiene supplies. If they don't have basic academic supplies they cannot do their school work. If a child can't do his school work he becomes disruptive. You do not want your children to be disruptive.

3) Comment by twinkie1cat - 24/07/2012

Tradwinns, you are sounding, as usual, like a selfish Republican. (I don't know why I even put "selfish" in any more. Selfish and Republican have become synonyms.) Every bit of those little supplies and more than the kids use in school gets used by the kids. Oh, it is ok for my kid to have a Kleenex, but that one who forgot to bring his, his nose can just run! Teachers spend a minimum of $200 per year on these necessary items for the classroom out of their own pocket. Asking the students to bring $5-10 worth of stuff helps. 2006, right before Katrina I spent about $500 on supplies for my students, from my last summer check (No, we don't get paid over the summer. Our annual salary is simply spread over 12 months.) Then I lost it all in Katrina. I evacuated with $20 and a tank of gas. That $500 was just to start the year. Being special education there were things I needed that could not be bought from academic catalogs even if we had money, which did not seem to happen in New Orleans. In Ascension they gave us most of what we needed except for those hygiene supplies that the writer is hollering about . Those were brought in by students, gradually, as the parents got paid as they were in New Orleans, in Baton Rouge, and in Atlanta. All the schools have to do this or we don't have the things we need. You and the writer need to get admitted to LSU, earn and education degree, get a job teaching and a reality check. I would be happy to mentor you through the first year, second if you need it. Bet you won't be a Republican after 3 if you make it that long

4) Comment by phil - 21/07/2012

If the kids could also carry a teacher and a school building with them to school then all of the financial problems with schools could possibly be solved. With all of the taxes everyone pays for schools you might think that the schools should be responsible to pay for basic school supplies. Where does all of that tax money go to?

5) Comment by lovemykids - 21/07/2012

I have known and know lots of teachers. I have never encountered one that did not go into their own pocket for supplies. I have also known families that make well above the poverty level that have not bothered to help with supplies.

6) Comment by 8point6 - 20/07/2012

Isn't it WBRZ that has the "fill the bus" with school supplies? How are these supplies distributed?

7) Comment by teacherguy - 20/07/2012

tradewins...teacher pay will continue to show up in these kinds of conversations until pay matches other professionals. If teachers were paid $60/hour for being on the clock, which is a low rate for a/c, auto, painters, etc. I can give you a hard estimate on what we SHOULD get. I made $48,000 last year with a Master's Degree and 18 years experience (my value added score put me at 88% two years ago and 73% last year, expecting somewhere in the middle next year)...so it could be argued I am one that "earns" his pay...I am on the clock from about 7-2:45...I don't get "breaks" and lunch is with the kids...7.75 hours per day...I'm going to include one extra hour we spend grading papers, writing lesson plans, preparing materials for lessons (photo copies, power points, etc.) because that time can become ambiguous depending on the teacher. So, we put in 8.75 hours a day at $60 per hour for 185 days...this equals $97,125...which actually becomes competitive with private industry...and happens to be closer to the average teacher salaries of the highest performing states in the nation where STRONG unions fight for teachers. The general public gets a bargain for even the "worst" teachers in the state...and when it comes to how much money we pull out of pocket for supplies in our classroom...YOU ARE GOING TO HEAR ABOUT TEACHER SALARY, buddy!!!! Especially when my mechanic just upped his hourly wage to $80/hour!!!! I wasn't complaining about my salary, just saying that if it weren't for my wife making almost double what I make...I couldn't support my family on what I make...I'd actually be eligible to get a school voucher...which is bordering poverty level according to even today Republicans...

8) Comment by Get Real - 20/07/2012

Come to Livingston Parish Wayne, the teachers here want the parents to buy their supplies then hit the parents with a workbook fee on workbooks that are given free by the book company.

9) Comment by tradewinns - 20/07/2012

if your kid needs something, you should supply it, period. not extras or in case it's needed. when your kid has a cold, send them to school with the tissues. somehow teachers always seem to get their paychecks into every conversation. it's not that teachers are overpaid, but they are not poverty level either. they make more than the average salary in La. so there's lots of others who make less. when it comes to the education "year", what does the contract state? that's how many days a teacher workd. in fla. it's 150 working days and 5 days of holidays. 150 days a year isn't a lot of working days when compared to those of us who work 5 days a week 50 weeks a year, minus the 5 national holidays (sometimes).

10) Comment by CountryBoysCanSurvive - 20/07/2012

What really gripes me is the facts that in a lot of cases, children have to by two of each item. Why you ask? So the kids who's parents, use all of their money on drugs/alcohol , will have supplies. These folks know that if they just don't buy school supplies, will get them for free just as they do for groceries, rent, clothes and medicine.

11) Comment by lovemykids - 20/07/2012

teacherguy great and polite response

12) Comment by spqr - 20/07/2012

Hey Bighug, the average school year is nearer to 185 days for students.

13) Comment by Bighug - 20/07/2012

One kid uses only one box of Kleenex tissue and one roll of paper towels in a school year? Seems like two or three of each would be closer to actual usage. If your school has 800 students and it takes about a gallon of gas to get each one to school and back each day, thats 800 gallons of gas each day, which comes to 132,000 gallons for a 165 day school year! What does the school do with all that gasoline? Obviously the answer to that and your other questions is "It is all used up."

14) Comment by teacherguy - 19/07/2012

I'm not a school board member, but I am a teacher. I can tell you that we can go through one box of tissue per week in my classroom during heavy snot times of the year. There are a total of 36 weeks in a school year...your teachers are requesting 25 boxes. When we run out of tissue, we use the brown paper towels from the bathroom which tends to be rather abrasive on even the seniors in high school. When it comes to paper towels...when we have fever/stomach viruses going around...we can use up a roll of paper towels every two days trying to clean the desks to slow down the rate of infection. Lord forbid there be a spill during a classroom party! You have me stumped on the sheer volume of Ziplock bags, but they work great for helping students keep up with all the little things. My elementary child has come home with cut up spelling vocab/definitions in a ziplock bag to study with. Multiply that times 25 kids, 36 weeks of school, and it begins to make a little more sense. I can see a dishpan per student in the lower grades as some sort of supply tray for artsy projects. Generally, although each student is required to bring these things...roughly less than half the student population will bring them...and in most situations the teacher will have to pull the money out of his/her pocket for these daily use things. Don't even get me started on teacher pay! If my wife didn't make double my salary, I couldn't afford to drive my 8 year old car and pay the mortgage on my house trailer. (True!) These kinds of supply lists are usually teacher specific, sometimes school specific...so a school board member is not the person you are really asking for here. I LOVE what they do in some of the Zachary schools...parents pay a fee of $45-$50 supply fees. The teacher is given a purchase order to buy all of the supplies students need for the year (and even a few items for her desk, incentives for students, and even lesson materials). Maybe this is one of the keys to having the number one district in the state? Not the supplies, but the poverty level of the community. What the teacher wants, he/she gets. It is a trade-off most parents would gladly pay! However, doing that in many public schools in high poverty districts would cause even greater outcry than your letter about supplies. The reason for the supply list you speak of is a watered down version of what a teacher thinks she can get by with for the year, without penalty for not bringing it to school, and providing flexibility for parents to get it as cheaply as they think they can. Just think, you are only dealing with one or two teachers in elementary school - I bet you can't wait until you have 6-7 in middle and high school! And college materials get even more out of the box...because professors generally won't buy things needed for daily use in the classroom out of pocket like teachers do.