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Back to School 2005

Teachers pitch in to help provide students' supplies

Parents aren't the only ones shelling out money for pencils and paper. Many teachers chip in to help their students.

By EMILY STEEL
Published August 3, 2005

Cheryl Mallory stood in the back-to-school section at Target with her daughter, looking at the three-ring binders, dry-erase markers, calculators and highlighters.

"It does add up,' she said.

She planned on spending about $100 to $125 on supplies for the first day of school - not including the extra $200 to $250 for school uniforms.

With two children - her daughter, Calla, a sophomore at St. Petersburg Catholic High School, and her son, Alex, an eighth-grader at St. Jude Cathedral School - Mallory said she spends $300 or more before they step foot in school this week.

For Mallory and other parents, the cost of school supplies has ballooned beyond the minimal price tags of spiral notebooks and pencils.

Many of the expenses are not items that schools actually require, but that parents and students feel their kids need.

For instance, an average supply list for elementary school students at Pinellas County schools adds up to about $10. Middle school students are expected to spend about the same.

Then comes the new lunch boxes, the backpacks, the calculators. The bill easily tops $100.

"Those are things that you can't get through the school system but that students still need," said Julie Whitley-Wood, a first-grade teacher at Mount Vernon Elementary School in St. Petersburg.

Lunch boxes range in price from $5 to $10. Backpacks can cost anywhere from $9.99 to $69 for L.L. Bean's top-of-the-line model. While basic scientific calculators cost between $5 to $10, graphing calculators for advanced calculus classes can cost up to $149.99.

"That's an expense," Mallory said. "But I think it helps them get organized and prepared so they start off the year right."

Beth Johnson, a first-grade teacher at Jamerson Elementary School, said she doesn't want her students to spend more than $10 on basic supplies like glue sticks, pencils and folders.

Like many teachers, she sets aside part of her salary to keep the classroom stocked for kids who don't have basic supplies.

Teachers spend an average of $1,000 each year on students' supplies, according to A Gift for Teaching of Pinellas, a nonprofit organization that aims to eventually provide school supplies for the almost 48,000 students in the district who receive free or reduced lunches.

At a minimum starting pay of $34,300 in Pinellas, teachers are siphoning off a significant portion of their salaries to take care of their students.

"The kids will have the stuff, there is no way we would not have provided that," said Nancy Schubart, a special education teacher at Fairmount Park Elementary School in St. Petersburg, who said she spends several hundred dollars a year on her students.

Teachers at Fairmount Park and 18 other schools in the county qualify to "shop" at A Gift for Teaching, where they are able to find donated school supplies for their students.

By the end of the school year, the organization wants to expand its services to include about 30 schools where at least 70 percent of students receive free and reduced lunches, program manager Jeff Tomeo said.

"If these kids can't afford to buy lunch, they can't afford to buy supplies," he said.

Backpack: $19.99

Calculator: $29.99

Lunch box: $7.99

Men's T-shirts for gym class: $7.99 3-pack

Tennis Shoes: $39.99

Athletic shorts: $9.99

Socks: $7.99 3-pack

Notebooks: $1 for 10

Filler paper: 50 cents

Colored pencils: $1 12 count

Binders: $2.99

Composition book: 50 cents

Dry-erase markers: $3.99

Index cards: 50 cents

Rulers: $1 for 5

Compass: $1.99

TOTAL: $137.40

[Last modified August 3, 2005, 00:36:17]