School Family

When my 14-year-old started talking about the style of backpack she wants for school this year, I felt that buying it for her would be aiding and abetting the destruction of her posture. The backpack was
perfectly fine—it’s the combined weight of the books it will be holding that has me seriously considering homeschooling my children just so they’ll never have to leave the house with 75 pounds of textbooks on their backs.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says backpacks shouldn’t exceed 10 percent of the student’s weight. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that last year, my daughter’s backpack weighed more than she did by 10 percent. I’d be thrilled if she’d agree to a backpack on wheels, but those haven’t been acceptable since she was a 4th grader and all the girls towed their books down the hallways like tiny flight attendants. People have always been willing to sacrifice comfort for fashion, but overloaded backpacks on growing bodies aren’t just uncomfortable, they’re a health risk. There has to be a way for kids to study at home without paying for it with lifelong back pain.

Argh! They got me. I swore I wouldn’t be sucked into the back-to-school shopping hype until the first day was clearly in sight. But then I saw an ad for 10-cent notebooks.

Just one dime for 70 spiral-bound pages! I just knew the offer would be gone by Aug. 27 (which, in my town, is the day before school begins and which, if past years are any indicator, is when I would have started my back-to-school shopping).

My personal weakness for notebooks propelled me to the store, where across the aisle I spotted boxes of 24-count crayons for 20 cents each. Now, if I took all of the barely used crayons in my home and laid them end to end, they would circle the earth seven times. Yet at 20 cents for 24 crayons (that’s less than a penny each!), I felt it would be irresponsible not to buy a couple of boxes. Then I spotted the glue sticks….

I prefer to delay back-to-school shopping until the last possible moment. If a school supply enters my thoughts before the end of August, I lose my ability to sustain the illusion that summer will last forever. When a school-related television commercial comes on, I mute the sound and pick up a book. On Sundays, I pull open the newspaper, scoop out the stacks of flyers, and dump them into the recycling bin. But despite all of my precautions, that ad for the 10-cent notebooks slipped through. I’m already feeling the chilly fall air.

Who needs tuition? This Cincinnati story on back-to-school price tags makes the case that the average public school parent, too, is shelling out more and more $$ for what once was considered basics.  Are we balancing school budgets on the backs of parents (again)? Where’s the line between what should be provided as a matter of course in a public school and what is rightfully considered an extra?

“The index projects that to fill the backpacks of their children this year, parents should have $351 available for elementary school pupils, $530 for middle schoolers and $894 for high school students. And those expenses don’t recognize the cost of back-to-school clothing.

The expenditures range from standard supplies to fees for extracurricular activities to study materials and fees for standardized college entrance tests.”

Ouch.

It certainly seems as if the line between what is considered a standard (covered) expense of providing a public education and what is considered an extra (and therefore fees can be charged) is moving rapidly? Where does it stop? As much as school is about learning and test scores, it’s also about a broad education and finding passions and learning to be a well-rounded, well-adjusted adult. Hate to see a day when kids will have to pay a fee to play a role in the school musical or debate club or basketball team. Those “extras” are not extras in my eyes. They’re essential parts of the school experience.

Where’s the line these days in your school? And is there any way we can stop that line from sliding, sliding, sliding to the point where there is a toll booth at the doorway to each classroom