Supply tuition being charged at our public schools

by David Safier

The Star has an article today, Teachers leaning on parents for supplies. It states what every parent knows, that the days of just buying a notebook, some paper and a few pens and pencils for their children's school supplies are long gone. The schools, in an effort not to cut staff in the face of their dwindling budgets (Thank you Al Melvin, Terri Proud, Vic Williams, Russell Pearce and all the other Republicans who "support education"), have cut supplies to nothing.

Making parents furnish supplies has a number of ramifications.

• It puts an added burden on low income parents.
• It means schools in affluent areas will be well supplied, while those serving poorer students will scrape by with less, increasing educational inequities.
• It means what should be a nominal school supply cost if it were shared by all taxpayers (and a progressive cost, with wealthier taxpayers paying more) is a reasonably steep flat tax on parents.
• It's incredibly inefficient economically. When school districts buy paper and other supplies by the pallet-load, they get them at discounted, wholesale prices. Parents pay two or three times as much — maybe more — for the same supplies at Target and Walgreens. The stores make out like bandits. Schools, students and parents suffer.