"Whatever you do, don't bring used supplies to school"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: those same stupid scissors and extra glue sticks still came home at the end of the year. And the countless barely-used composition books. yes, I too, kept them and am still using them up with my personal uses, even though I absolutely HATE them because they don't open flat, can't fold them over, can't easily rip out pages.

I feel this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:4 glue sticks is great. My kids need 8 and 12. Plus 3 boxes of Ticonderoga pencils each. They are expensive. Every year their supply list is outrageous, everything is brand specified, and we don’t get anything back except a couple highlighters.

By mistake I bought unsharpened Ticonderoga pencils one year. Probably around 3 boxes. The teacher sent them home for us to sharpen all of them. I remember as a kid going to the back of the room to use the wall sharpener and sharpening as slow as I possibly could. I guess kids don't get the small freedom anymore.

I would have found that quite rude and ungrateful, and would have kept the pencils for my household.

I honestly can't understand the supply lists for so many pencils, gluesticks, notebooks, papers or binders, when almost everything is done digitally now anyway. I WISH these things were actually needed!

Ugh. “Ungrateful” for what exactly? You didn’t do the teacher any favors. The supplies are for your kid and the other kids.

It’s actually the school’s job to provide these, that’s what the taxes are for.

Neat. Well, hold your breath until that happens, mmkay?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not buying any supplies this year. ACPS has screwed me so hard I'm not giving them another dime.

I’m sure they’ll cry themselves to sleep at night about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:4 glue sticks is great. My kids need 8 and 12. Plus 3 boxes of Ticonderoga pencils each. They are expensive. Every year their supply list is outrageous, everything is brand specified, and we don’t get anything back except a couple highlighters.

By mistake I bought unsharpened Ticonderoga pencils one year. Probably around 3 boxes. The teacher sent them home for us to sharpen all of them. I remember as a kid going to the back of the room to use the wall sharpener and sharpening as slow as I possibly could. I guess kids don't get the small freedom anymore.

I would have found that quite rude and ungrateful, and would have kept the pencils for my household.

I honestly can't understand the supply lists for so many pencils, gluesticks, notebooks, papers or binders, when almost everything is done digitally now anyway. I WISH these things were actually needed!

Ugh. “Ungrateful” for what exactly? You didn’t do the teacher any favors. The supplies are for your kid and the other kids.

It’s actually the school’s job to provide these, that’s what the taxes are for.

Neat. Well, hold your breath until that happens, mmkay?

Anne Arundel has actually started supplying elementary school supplies! It's magical. They did last year with COVID money, and are doing it again this year (nor sure where the money is coming from now).
My kids supply list is "backpack (no wheels), water bottle, lunch box if needed"

[Anonymous]

I live in FCPS and we get back unused supplies. If there are enough of them, I send them in the following year. The only complaint I have with the lists are the need for 6 composition notebooks when those are hardly ever used. I get that there is one for each of the subjects (Math, Science, LA, and Social Studies) but I am not certain that the one for a journal or whatever the 6th one is used for is needed. DS uses maybe two or three pages and he is done.

I went through his pencil pouch before back to school shopping this year and everything in their was just gross. Pencils down to the nub, busted crayons. Everything looked grey, probably from running up against pencils for a year.

I have no issue with sending in extra highlighters and markers and stuff when the packages are bigger then the request. I am not worried if the teacher gets more of what they ask for. I am guessing that there are kids whose parents don't buy supplies or kids who move into the class in the middle of the year so the extra doesn't go to waste.

I kind of wish that they just kept the left overs and took a quick inventory at the end of the year before making the new list. Adjust the amounts base don what you already have. Or ask if we want them to keep the leftovers and donate them to a Title 1 school that might need them. That way the package of pens that was opened and 1 or 2 removed doesn't come home and is deemed non-donatable by another organization because the package is opened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live in FCPS and we get back unused supplies. If there are enough of them, I send them in the following year. The only complaint I have with the lists are the need for 6 composition notebooks when those are hardly ever used. I get that there is one for each of the subjects (Math, Science, LA, and Social Studies) but I am not certain that the one for a journal or whatever the 6th one is used for is needed. DS uses maybe two or three pages and he is done.

I went through his pencil pouch before back to school shopping this year and everything in their was just gross. Pencils down to the nub, busted crayons. Everything looked grey, probably from running up against pencils for a year.

I have no issue with sending in extra highlighters and markers and stuff when the packages are bigger then the request. I am not worried if the teacher gets more of what they ask for. I am guessing that there are kids whose parents don't buy supplies or kids who move into the class in the middle of the year so the extra doesn't go to waste.

I kind of wish that they just kept the left overs and took a quick inventory at the end of the year before making the new list. Adjust the amounts base don what you already have. Or ask if we want them to keep the leftovers and donate them to a Title 1 school that might need them. That way the package of pens that was opened and 1 or 2 removed doesn't come home and is deemed non-donatable by another organization because the package is opened.

All of that requires storage space. Teachers typically have to pack up and vacate their classrooms during the summer so it can be used for summer schoo, camps, etc., and get fairly limited storage space for all of their supplies. They simply don’t have the luxury of holding onto a box of unused student school supplies because they need ghat space for books or their own school supplies.

[Anonymous]

Whhhhyyyyy do teachers keep requesting those black & white composition books year after year when they never get used??

My youngest is going on year 3 with the same damn notebook! I refuse to buy a new one because I know it won't get used. History has taught me that this is true. With my older kids, I always bought a new one each year. No more!

In 1st grade, he used ~6 pages in it. It was used a journal and apparently the only time they had to write in their journals was when the teacher needed extra time to prep a lesson. In 2nd grade, he used one single page. I'm not even sure if it was school related, either, because it was a bunch of hash lines and the alphabet forwards and backwards.

I use an exacto knife to cut out the used pages, tug the back of the notebook to see if the accompanying pages come loose, and slap a white sticker on the cover to write the new "purpose" of the notebook.

I saw a school supply list for a K kid that included FOUR laundry detergents. What the what? AND four???

[Anonymous]

The supplies are used by all the staff and teachers in the school. School supplies are never, ever wasted. Many teachers and specialists get no budget and supplies other then what's sent in and shared by homeroom teachers. Often teachers, staff and specialists end up making up the slack by buying thier own supplies and materials for your students to use in their classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The supplies are used by all the staff and teachers in the school. School supplies are never, ever wasted. Many teachers and specialists get no budget and supplies other then what's sent in and shared by homeroom teachers. Often teachers, staff and specialists end up making up the slack by buying thier own supplies and materials for your students to use in their classes.

So you're saying all the parents talking about returned composition books with blank pages are wrong? You're experience is just yours. Others are different. In some schools maybe what you're saying is true but it's not a universal truth.

[Anonymous]

We recently moved out of Virginia and our new district expressly encourages parents to reuse whatever supplies they can. It’s written right up at the top of the list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t get the whole communist idea of pooled supplies.

I pool supplies such as glue sticks, pencils, index cards, post-it notes - but not notebooks or folders. It’s easier in my end, that’s why I do it. I have NEVER had a parent complain after almost 20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We recently moved out of Virginia and our new district expressly encourages parents to reuse whatever supplies they can. It’s written right up at the top of the list.

We've been in multiple districts and they have all done the same. I think OP's experience is the exception, not the rule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:So what I've learned from this thread is that people will complain if they get back unused supplies (wasteful!) and complain if they don't get back the unused supplies (those are mine!). I don't believe there's anything the teachers could do that wouldn't lead to complaining, so I don't see the point in wondering why they don't do things differently.

This is kind of disingenuous. I’m not even sure it’s the teachers who make these lists. But if the kids are going to use 3 pages of a composition book, they don’t need one. They can use notebook paper. Or one composition book for all the subjects. The point is, just don’t ask for supplies that aren’t actually needed. But yes, if stuff is leftover, send it Back to the people who paid for it in the first place. Why is that hard?

It's not disingenuous at all, because I'm not trying to accurately describe your personal complaints. Everything I listed has been complained about in the thread by different people. You're just complaining from yet another angle - these lists are stupid, who makes them?! And I personally would prefer that they keep any leftovers rather than send it back to me, but I've never in life complained about it either way.

I don't envy teachers. I get the list, I buy the crap, I send it in. It's not particularly expensive, but I know that some families can't afford it so I buy extra or make a donation for that purpose. At this point I haven't even met the teacher yet but look at all these parents pissed off at her from the jump because of . . . everything and nothing! It's not like these teachers invented the concept of bringing in school supplies.

You're whining that other people think the process could be better? Ok. Your complaints are valid, others are not.

"Think the process could be better" by ::checks notes:: definitely sending back unused supplies, but also never sending back unused supplies. Yep. Great, valid input in this thread. Pointing out that you're all at cross purposes isn't whining, it's summarizing.

But just to be clear, I am saying you guys are whiners and I pity teachers. You're literally arguing that teachers are wrong and bad for not doing things the way you want them, even though the things you want are completely contradictory and mutually exclusive. But teachers are the problem, sure.

Maybe you need to go back to school because your reading comprehension is lacking. The complaints boil down to one compliant — teachers are asking for supplies they don’t need.

I haven’t seen anyone complain that supplies got sent home, except to the extent that they were sent home completely unused, indicating that they were not needed in the first place. Unopened packs of red pens? *Twenty* (2-0!) glue sticks? Or the universal complaint (which I share) about unused composition books? I have an entire collection of otherwise unused composition books that have DC’s name on them (and - maybe - one page of writing). I guess teachers *could* avoid parents knowing that the supplies were completely unnecessary if they didn’t send anything home, but thst doesn’t solve the underlying problem, does it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was posted by a teacher in my local moms group. Why? The fact that our children bring home tons of slightly used pencils/erasers/scissors/folders/etc is testament to the fact that they don't get fully used up during the school year and you don't NEED brand new supplies. What harm is it to you if we send those same items in for the coming school year?

Exactly and I agree

and I would have posted "whatever you do, don't request ridiculous amounts of supplies that are really not needed and won't even get used"

Teacher lists need to be way, way trimmed down and they need to only add what a kid really needs.

I'm talking to YOU 4 glue stick, 24 pack of pencils, 6 binders Teacher. You will see my used pencils, erasures, scissors etc again. It's called being good stewards of the environment ! Recycling.

4 glue sticks? lol my dd's list wants TEN!

I am really annoyed by the requests for supplies that are hard AF to find. Like 8 packs of markers (they come in 10 packs! 10 packs are on sale and the only 8 packs are on amazon for $9), 8 packs of multicultural crayons when they come in 24 packs (at least at Walmart and Target).

I will say that I can't send used supplies back to school. I should have taken a picture of my dd's supplies on the last day of school- 1 inch crayons that were broken and all missing the wrappers, pencils that were broken, not one pencil had an eraser, the supply box was busted and missing the latch, pencil shavings galore, marker caps with no markers. It was like a big box of trash. The only thing reusable was the scissors.

What the hell are "multicultural crayons"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

If your supplies are in like-new condition such that no one could tell for sure if they’d been used before, no one is going to say a word about them not being new. Send in all the like-new scissors and rulers you want. But when you send in a folder that last year’s teacher wrote a student number on in sharpie, that’s a hassle for this year’s teacher because your kid will probably have a different number in this year’s class and now the teacher has to label over the old one rather than just writing it right on the folder with her own sharpie. And when you send in a box of nearly dried out markers, those will last about a day and a half before they get thrown out again. Half-used packets of loose paper are a hassle to store in the classroom until they are needed without paper falling out and making a mess.

Doesn't the student number stay the same? How about if parents send last year's school supplies with a sticker over any marks from the previous year?