KALAMAZOO, MI – The return of students to the classroom for the start of the new school year brings joy to many.
However, the start of school also brings with it the pressure of high costs for families.
Shona Espinoza is one of the parents feeling the pinch. She is a teacher’s aide at Kalamazoo Public Schools’ Hillside Middle School and has a son in third grade. She expects to spend several hundred dollars on school supplies for her child.
Espinoza’s son, who attends Greenwood Elementary School, needs the usual backpack, lunch box, notebook, pencil case, pencils, scissors, glue and erasers, she said.
But this challenge also brings with it other costs.
“He eats lunch every day, so I have to budget for that,” Espinoza said. “Then he needs hair care products because his hair is pretty long. Just basic things like socks, underwear, clothes and an extra pair of shoes.”
And it’s not just the beginning of the school year.
“Every few months I have to find a new pair of shoes,” Espinoza said.
Espinoza brings home about $700 every two weeks. With other costs like housing, there isn’t enough money left over for school supplies.
In the classroom
In Michigan, parents are not required to purchase school supplies. The state constitution requires public school districts to provide the necessary school supplies for instruction, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
However, many teachers send out lists at the beginning of the school year with recommended teaching materials that students should bring with them.
“(Teachers) rely on a lot of these (materials). You know, the kids have a notebook, the kids have pencils,” said Denise Crawford, president and CEO of the Family Health Center in Kalamazoo.
In the lower grades, the material lists do not vary much from grade to grade or from grade to grade.
More advanced classes, however, require special materials. High school students may need more expensive graphing calculators. If a student doesn’t have their own, they may not be able to take home one provided by the school, Espinoza said.
School supply lists ranged from eight to thirty items (sixth grade at Comstock Public Schools) on various supply lists obtained by MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette throughout the county.
At Gull Lake Public Schools, teachers are not paid, Superintendent Christopher Rundle said in an email. He said if students do not bring the necessary materials, the district will provide them.
Some higher-level courses are more difficult because the materials are so important to the work. Espinoza discovered this when her oldest daughter took an AP Fine Arts course.
“You had to buy art supplies, and if you can’t buy art supplies, how are you supposed to meet the requirements?” Espinoza said.
But even if classroom supplies are available, it may be the teachers’ responsibility to purchase them. Teachers receive a grant from the school district to purchase school supplies, Crawford said, but that’s not always enough.
“Nine times out of 10, when our children come to school and need something, the teacher or our principal buys it and has to pay a large portion of it out of their own pocket,” Espinoza said.
At Portage Public Schools, the school supplies budget teachers receive depends on the general school budget. The amount varies based on “total student enrollment, class size, grade level (and) school needs,” said Michelle Karpinski, PPS communications director.
Some teachers create an Amazon list of classroom supplies such as books, tissues and pencils that community members can donate to.
If a student does not have the appropriate school supplies, the school district will provide them, KPS Superintendent Darrin Slade said at an Aug. 22 board meeting.
School starts in Kalamazoo County on Monday, August 26th.
Back to school activities
Several local organizations are running back-to-school events to help fill the gaps for parents.
The Family Health Center has been hosting a back-to-school party for 15 years, where they distribute free backpacks filled with school supplies.
The campaign began as a way to vaccinate students before the school year began. Providing the backpacks was a good incentive, Crawford said.
“Many teachers said our parents just can’t afford (materials), supplies are expensive,” Crawford said.
Most of the Family Health Center’s patients are on Medicaid, Crawford said, and buying school supplies isn’t their biggest concern.
“We have homeless children, we have undocumented children. We have uninsured children,” Crawford said.
Students can choose the color of their backpack and receive free toiletries tailored to their gender and hair type.
“We don’t want it to feel like a free handout,” Crawford said. “We want it to feel like it was designed specifically for you.”
The Portage Department of Public Safety hosted a back-to-school event with free school supplies on Aug. 15. The event was especially important because some students’ homes were destroyed by a tornado in May, said Portage Public Safety Sergeant Kyle Doster.
At a school board meeting on Thursday, August 23, Kalamazoo Public Schools Trustee Takisha Johnson encouraged students to attend a free haircut and backpack giveaway at UncLee’s Barbershop, 1909 West Main St., on Saturday, August 24, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“I’m excited about this event because it benefits the west side of town,” Johnson said. “We tend to forget about the youth on that side.”
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