A single pack of glue sticks into her back-to-school shopping at the St. Paul Midway SuperTarget, Aamera Siddiqui’s patience already was running thin.
She labored to keep her two daughters in check while flipping through her phone for Groveland Park’s kindergarten and fifth-grade supplies lists — a combined 29 items long.
“It’s a time-consuming pain and the stores don’t always have everything in stock,” she said on a mid-August morning.
Siddiqui planned to visit at least one other store before heading home to search online for anything she couldn’t find in stores.
“I don’t mind spending the money on it,” she said. “For me, it’s this stuff that’s hard.”
St. Paul Public Schools provides each building with $133 per student for school supplies. Chief financial officer Marie Schrul thinks that should be enough.
“It’s not like we’re not giving resources to the schools for that purpose,” she said.
Yet, parents are expected to contribute considerably more — an average of $36.41 for St. Paul district kindergartners, according to a Pioneer Press study using the least expensive products at local retailers.
That figure excludes other necessary back-to-school items, such as backpacks, gym shoes and clothes.
A school-by-school comparison that incorporated eligibility rates for free and reduced-price lunches found that schools with students from more affluent families tend to ask parents for more supplies.
On the low end were lists for Obama Elementary and J.J. Hill Montessori, about $15 per kindergartner.
Topping the list were Highland Park Elementary, whose $104.49 list calls for a monthly snack for the entire class; Horace Mann, whose $73.52 total includes a $30 field trip fee; and L’Etoile du Nord French Immersion ($60.70), which asks each kid to bring 30 glue sticks, plus three more for science class.
Sixty percent of U.S. parents struggle to pay for school supplies, according to a recent survey conducted on behalf of the financial literacy nonprofit Junior Achievement.
Julie Bowen, PTO president at L’Etoile du Nord, was surprised to learn the district gives schools $133 per student for supplies.
“If they have that per child, why do I have to buy those classroom supplies?” she said.
Most puzzling, Bowen said, is that parents are asked to buy items like tissues (all but three have them on their lists) and reams of copy paper, which one-third of schools request.
Parents say it’s not unusual for schools to ask for more supplies or cash during the school year.
SHOPPING MADE EASY
A few schools have endeavored to make back-to-school shopping easier on parents.
For several years, parents at L’Etoile du Nord and Adams Spanish Immersion have enlisted SchoolKidz, an affiliate of the office supply chain Staples, to do the shopping for them and deliver supplies directly to the schools.
Bowen said the L’Etoile du Nord PTO makes some money off the deal, but the service is mainly for parents’ convenience. She said about 10 percent to 15 percent of the school’s parents use SchoolKidz.
Bowen paid the company $64 to compile her third-grader’s supplies this year.
“I love shopping, but when it comes down to looking at the list and making sure I get every little thing, I just don’t want to manage the stress of that,” she said.
Jane Baer, a parent volunteer who manages the SchoolKidz account at Adams, said the service is both cheaper and more convenient than buying the supplies herself. About half of Adams parents use it, she said.
Because most of what St. Paul parents buy for school is used by the entire class, not just their children, Baer sees little reason for parents to do the shopping on their own.
Services like SchoolKidz also have the benefit of making sure teachers get exactly what they wanted, she said.
At Linwood Monroe Arts Plus, kindergarten teachers pay for supplies with cash donations collected from parents in the fall.
After parents at Crossroads Montessori complained about hard-to-find items, teachers agreed to buy them on their own. Parents still have to buy the basics and fork over $15 for the rest.
Hamline, too, has a no-frills kindergarten list plus a $30 charge for additional supplies, a T-shirt and field trips.
But most schools simply send out a list and hope they get what they need by the time school starts.
Riverview West Side Principal Nancy Paez this summer emailed parents with good news. The school, she said, found it could buy supplies in bulk more cheaply than parents could. In lieu of supplies, she asked parents to send $40.
But when school district officials got wind of her plan — through reporting for this story — they nixed it.
Riverview doesn’t have a PTO, district spokeswoman Toya Stewart Downey said, and the district didn’t want school staff trying to manage the exchange of thousands of dollars.
A BETTER WAY?
Supplies lists are common in U.S. schools, but parents say there has to be a better way.
“I don’t remember having to bring three grocery bags to school,” Siddiqui said, recalling her childhood.
At one time, the St. Paul district had its own storehouse, which would deliver supplies to its schools as needed. But “it got too costly to run,” said Schrul, the finance chief.
So, St. Paul schools get $133 per student to spend as they wish.
That’s more than what the Anoka-Hennepin district hands out — $86.57 per student for elementary schools, $101.10 for middle schools and $112.11 for high schools. Minneapolis Public Schools does not have a separate line item for supplies.
Schrul said schools may spend part of their supplies allocations on such things as copy machines or even teaching assistants. She advises small elementary schools to reserve about $20,000 a year for supplies, middle schools about $35,000 and high schools $65,000.
Given economies of scale, that ought to be enough to supply a school, she said.
So, what to make of the 1,257 reams of copy paper, 21,980 glue sticks and 86,344 crayons that St. Paul kindergartners will be lugging to school after Labor Day?
“It bothers me,” Schrul said.