How Much Do Massachusetts Parents Spend On School Supplies?

DANVERS, MA — When Crytsal Guarente came back from a Target run to pick up school supplies for her Danvers 6th grader, her husband looked at the $300 receipt and asked what else she had bought. The answer was "nothing." Five binders, five folders, composition books, a hole puncher, graph paper, pens, pencils, highlighters and white board markers are not big ticket items in and of themselves, but outfit a kid with everything they need for a school year and those little items add up quick.

Guarente was one of the parents who responded when Patch asked how much they were spending on school supplies. Fortunately, most parents we heard from had bills in the $35 to $50 range, but many noted that the amount they spend has been creeping up in recent years and that some items —tissues, hand sanitizers and those whiteboard markers — on the lists provided by schools are items that were once covered by school budgets. Uniforms, Chromebooks, specialized art supplies and multiple school-age children also jacked up the out-of-pocket expenses for parents.

To be clear, no parent reported spending more than $459 unless they had multiple kids. That's the inflation-adjusted average amount Massachusetts teachers spent out-of-pocket on school supplies in 2011-12, according to a recent study. Teachers can deduct up to $250 from gross income for certain supplies, but the 2017 tax reform bill means they can no longer deduct unreimbursed work-related expenses that exceeded $250 as an itemized deduction.

And the back-to-school pinch on parents' pocketbooks is real, with Americans expected to spend $27.8 billion on supplies for kids in grades K through 12 this year. Deanna Spinosa said she spent $134 to get her son ready to start school at Wilmington Middle School this fall — not counting the $250 to $300 she'll spend on a Chromebook and protective case.

She didn't complain about the spending, but she did complain about late additions and subtractions to the list of supplies her son needed late in the summer. Some items Spinosa's son won't need can't be returned because they've already been labeled, while the new items on the list mean another trip to Staples.

"I don’t have a problem buying school supplies. I will always get my children what they need for school," she said. "What I do have a problem with is after buying and labeling all his supplies, is getting an email [with a list] which is not the same list as was posted online."

Joanne Fazell said she started complaining to her principal about the added items showing up on lists before she retired from teaching a few years ago. At the time, each student was being asked to bring $35 of supplies beyond their own personal supplies for use by the entire class. She felt this put pressure on families who were struggling.

"My problem was that this mother and her children felt that if each of the children did not bring in the requested supplies, they would be 'shamed,' as there was a list in each classroom of who had donated, or bags with each child's name on it," she said in an email. "I told [a mother] NOT to send anything in, but the children felt that they would be singled out (and the other children did not know of their financial plight)."