Anonymous wrote:I did last year for convenience and because it's a fundraiser for the school.
But then in August the school sent a list of additional items needed that weren't in the pre-ordered box.
So I had to run out and buy those anyway.
Because of that, I may skip it this year. You're right that the school boxes are more expensive than buying on your own.

I used to think that but then I asked and found out the school gets nothing from it. They just do it for the convenience of the parents. I am mixed on the idea. It is a convenience, but my kids have used a lot of their stuff from year to year (how many rounded scissors do I need?). We often re-use the composition notebooks b/c they only used 20 pages of it. I can't throw those out or just send them to recycling... we "re-use" before we recycle. So, I generally don't buy the kits anymore... but nothing wrong with buying them and doing it that way.

Anonymous wrote:Our school kids are a ripoff. Ours are not a moneymaker for the school, but the purchased kits finance "freebies" for the FARMS students. All of our supplies are pooled anyway, so I'd rather buy a few extra packs of pencils, markers and scissors when we hit the back to school sales at Walmart and Target.

Isn't that a good thing for your community?

Anonymous wrote:It is like school pictures. They are expensive, but they are a fundraiser and convenient.

+1

Anonymous wrote:I HATE HATE HATE shopping (you people who love to shop reaally baffle me). It's a great time saver. I don't care to rummage through and price shop to save a few bucks on something as trivial as school supplies. Im sure I'd feel difderent if we were hard up.

Same here. My time is worth more than the <$20 I might save if I were to shop sales and buy the items myself.

We always shopped for them ourselves and found we spent about half of the kits cost. At first, I'd beat myself up over not being able to find a certain brand eraser or something, only to find out that a substitute brand was fine - the other brand was just their preferred.

Like another PP above, I was a SAHM and I have 2 girls who like school supply shopping, so it was a fun outing day for us, especially at the end of summer when we were running out of things to do. But I understand why others might prefer the kits.

I HATE HATE HATE shopping (you people who love to shop reaally baffle me). It's a great time saver. I don't care to rummage through and price shop to save a few bucks on something as trivial as school supplies. Im sure I'd feel difderent if we were hard up.

No. They are way overpriced and I love back to school shopping.

Yes. Best thing ever.

I would do the kit because the list would come out really late; sometimes each teacher had a different list, and you wouldn't know till you got homeroom assignments that you needed a college-ruled-graph-composition book or green ballpoint pens, then you're store hopping with empty shelves or on amazon ...

I go to Target once, in July, when everything is in stock and nothing is on sale and it's STILL $10 less per kid than the kits. But that's not why I do it. My kids like to pick their pencil bags and composition books and other items where the color is not specified. (I have 2 girls, who are easy to take shopping, and I SAH. I can understand why others would do the kits but we look forward to it.)

Anonymous wrote:Our school doesn't actually make any money off of them - it's a pass-through item on our budget. We actually end up shelling out for kits for some of the kids whose parents can't afford it, so it's a good way to make sure all kids have the same supplies.

I miss shopping for school supplies, though! We usually do a backpack program where we buy supplies for a less-well-off kid in a DC school so we can have the fun of buying cute folders and pencil boxes and fun little extras.

We do the same here... I love school supplies and shopping so I get the joy of shopping along with the satisfaction of doing a good thing by buying for a school our church adopted, but the kits ensure my kids have the right stuff for their school year without any stress on my end.

Anonymous wrote:Our school kids are a ripoff. Ours are not a moneymaker for the school, but the purchased kits finance "freebies" for the FARMS students. All of our supplies are pooled anyway, so I'd rather buy a few extra packs of pencils, markers and scissors when we hit the back to school sales at Walmart and Target.

I posted above that out kits are the same as what I would pay at Target, not shopping for specific sales. Ours also include "freebies" too and are also pooled, but I don't mind. We're doing fine financially and have been lucky in life; the $100 I spend on school supplies for my 2 kids and the kids in their class who can't afford them isn't going to break the bank.

Our school kids are a ripoff. Ours are not a moneymaker for the school, but the purchased kits finance "freebies" for the FARMS students. All of our supplies are pooled anyway, so I'd rather buy a few extra packs of pencils, markers and scissors when we hit the back to school sales at Walmart and Target.

I can afford $55 so I use the school kit.

I do. i just priced out everything on the list to target and the prices were actually more on target. Sure i could shop sales but I don't have the time or energy for that.