School Supplies

In my kids' school (K-8) the biggest secret of the summer all the way through to opening day is who their teachers will be.  This is a closely guarded secret, because the school does not want to be inundated with calls from unhappy parents who would prefer their kid was placed in another parallel class with a different teacher. Once school starts it's in place already, and then I guess the parents can be more easily ignored.

This brings up a a problem that is, to put it mildly, annoying.  School supplies. Because of this closely guarded secret the school will not send out a list from the teacher, because then the teacher will know who is in the class (and may divulge it), and if a parent does enough detective work  they may figure out who the teacher is ("oh, you need the zipper looseleaf? You must be in Mrs. Katz's class").

So what happens? The first week of September, when all of the big chain stores have depleted their school supplies and moved on to Pumpkins and Reindeer, our kids come home from school the first day with a list of school supplies.  Some of the items are very typical, and thus easily bought in July when the notebooks costs 10 cents, and the folders are plentiful and cute. However, at least three or four of the items are teacher specific, and sometimes very, very, very specific (my friend went shopping today for a yellow plastic folder and a blue plastic folder, both with prongs!). So aside from the headache of trying to get back on schedule after the summer, and NOT have to go out shopping for supplies,which are in fact only available in small local stores, or the annoyance of paying so much more for things you looked at when they were dirt cheap in the summer, it's the simplicity of how to rectify this situation that really upsets me.

There are two solutions.

1. Tell the teachers they need to all get on the same page and make the supplies uniform for all parallel classes of each grade.  The teachers will have to compromise and learn to "make do" with supplies that another teacher thinks are essential to proper learning.  (It's called working together.)  Then the school can mail home a list in JULY with, for example, the 4th grade list of supplies.  It will be a uniform list, so no one will know who the teacher is, and the parents can send the kids to school with all their neccessary items, not worry about trying to find supplies when they have been sold out for two weeks, and in general make the experience more pleasant (in the teacher's defense they NO LONGER ask for the supplies with in two days...we have until Monday!).

2. If the teachers cannot all get on the same page, and there are teachers who insist on supplies that are not intuitive to parents or uniform (everyone asks for looseleafs, and notebooks, folders, paper, pens and pencils, so that list can surely come home early) then the teacher should purchase the supplies she wants (in JULY when they are good and cheap!) and then tell the class to bring in the money to recieve that necessary item.

Simplicity.

That's probably why they don't do it.