Could School District Save Parents’ $$$ with Bulk Buying?
September 22nd, 2009 by Ric HallockWarning: constant() [function.constant]: Couldn't find constant TT_TH8US_LEN in /home/psblogs/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this.php on line 1821
Warning: constant() [function.constant]: Couldn't find constant TT_TH8US_LEN in /home/psblogs/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this.php on line 1821
Warning: constant() [function.constant]: Couldn't find constant TT_TH8US_LEN in /home/psblogs/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this.php on line 1821
Warning: constant() [function.constant]: Couldn't find constant TT_TH8US_LEN in /home/psblogs/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this.php on line 1821
Warning: constant() [function.constant]: Couldn't find constant TT_TH8US_LEN in /home/psblogs/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this.php on line 1821
Like swallows to Capistrano, students and educators have flocked back to area schools to start anew the educational cycle for 2009-10. Preceding the annual return to the hallowed halls is the parents’ annual trek to area stores and malls to meet the demands of the back-to-school supplies necessary to keep the classrooms running efficiently.
Not to sound like the proverbial old coot, but “when I was a kid,” we seldom had to bring more than a notebook of lined paper and a sunny disposition to start a new school year. I remember my teacher even handing me a shiny and unsharpened bright yellow No. 2 on the first day. But tightening budgets and burgeoning classrooms have conspired to create the system we have today, wherein parents must supply the class with many of the necessities that schools routinely supplied in the past.
Today’s student is lacking if she doesn’t bring a box of tissues, crayons, erasers, markers, notebooks, reams of paper, tape, rulers, glue sticks, highlighters, Ziploc bags, hand sanitizers, scissors, calculators, pocket dictionaries and enough pencils to build a bridge that would put the Tacoma Narrows to shame.
What got me to thinking was the demand for reams of paper. I got to wondering just how big the stack of paper would be if you totaled all the students in all the classrooms in all the schools in the Peninsula School District who were asked to bring a ream of paper to start the year. This rather simple query turned into a laborious task of Sisyphian proportions as I took to amassing the school supply lists of the 15 schools in the PSD realm.
The results of my query resulted in four rather cumbersome charts, which can be accessed as PDFs labeled in the following:
psd-09-supplies-per-student (SPS): Shows the supplies needed by each student in each grade, with a total dollar amount per student factored in with the pricing guide.
school Supplies by Grade/School (SGS): Shows totals of each item requested for each grade, based on projected enrollment numbers for 2009-10 posted on the PSD Web site.
psd-09-total-supplies-by-school (TSS): Shows total number of each item requested by each school, with a total for all of the districts eight elementary and four middle schools.
psd-09-supplies-prices (SP): Shows estimated cost of each item, total requested for the school district and the cost to parents based on these amounts.
As a matter of full disclosure, please note there are a number of discrepancies that make this list necessarily incomplete. For one, the high schools are not represented as class supply lists are not posted online. The per-student total is not completely accurate as a number of the supplies can be purchased at different stores for different prices — sometimes for big discounts at some stores. Also, the per-student total can be skewed by unlisted items, i.e. middle school students are required to provide gym clothes and some, locks for a locker, and none of this is incorporated into the cost totals.
Likewise, many parents refuse to purchase the total amount of some items requested, i.e. a student may be asked to bring 10 glue sticks, but a parent supplies three or they opt to not send some of the requested supplies to school at all.
And naturally enough, there is the matter of recycling. Many parents save items from one school year to the next — such as watercolor paints, or reusable items like calculators and rulers — eliminating the need to purchase the item anew each year. The costs per student shown on SPS assume that a parent is buying every item on the list as requested for the new school year.
Now I’m no statistical engineer, so my math and logic is in no way meant to be comprehensive or complete. Rather, this little project led me to pose the bigger question: Given the distressed economy, could the school district pool the teacher wish lists, purchase the major accoutrement at a discounted bulk rate and save parents a lump sum of cash?
And like any statistical study, interesting facts and heretofore unasked questions come up when the data is laid out side by side.
For example: While most schools require at least one box of Kleenex per student, kids in Goodman Middle School must have particularly runny noses as they are expected to supply 2,196 boxes of tissues for the 549 students — a total of four boxes per student. And kids at Artondale and Purdy elementary schools plan to glue a lot of paper, with both schools expecting more than 3,500 glue sticks, while Evergreen Elementary and Goodman Middle School students will glue nary a dozen pieces of paper together with Evergreen asking for little more than two glue sticks per student and Goodman less than one per student.
And my original question on reams of paper? Students at Harbor Ridge and Voyager didn’t need to weigh their backpacks down on opening day as they were not asked for any reams, while Kopachuck tipped the other end of the scale, requesting 1,112 reams from the 656 students. Districtwide, a whopping 4,355 reams of paper were expected to be collected. With a ream of 20 lb. bond measuring 2 inches deep, that’s a stack of reams topping out at just over 725 feet high. If you were to stack the reams 10 feet high, you would need a closet measuring at least 6.5 feet by 7.5 feet and 10 feet high.
Anyone who has manipulated statistics knows you can create a number or set of numbers to represent just about anything you want. Looking at the numbers, a parent could wonder why a fifth grader at Artondale requires more than $80 in supplies while his counterpart at Minter Creek can meet her needs with less than $20. And do Artondale third-grade and Harbor Heights fourth-grade teachers really expect to go through 60 pencils per student in one school year? (That’s a new pencil for every three school days.)
But that’s not the point here. I’ll leave that kind of number crunching to those of you who feel compelled to look into this further. My point is to the school district. Couldn’t the district, with its buying power, purchase the non-reusable items on the lists each year — say like the 23,432 glue sticks (parent price of 3 for .99 cents, costs parents $7,732.56), 7,714 Kleenex boxes (.99 each for a total of $7,636.86), and 4,355 reams of paper ($2.99 per ream, $13,021.45)?
The district could recoup the funds by then charging the parents what it paid for each item, so the parents are still footing the supplies bill, but getting the district’s buying clout.
It just seems to me a good starting off point to talk about the district looking to be innovative in ways to help parents meet the needs of the classroom by using its buying power to reduce the overall costs of going back to school. Anyone agree?
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
What a great idea!
Do I understand correctly that the students are expected to bring all that material to the class for the school to store? If the students must bring their materials, why not bring them when needed?
Bulk buying, of course, makes the most sense.
Sharon O’Hara
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 pm
The schools have the ability to purchase at the best available prices in the market today from their Co-Op which is KCDA. The reason they put this burden back on the parents is that it comes out of the supply budget. Which is their smallest of more than 10 different budget buckets. The box stores know this and pressure the schools with rebates to the schools supply budget if their students purchase from their store. So the parents spend their money on supplies, and the schools actually receive more money to their supply budget in the from of a rebate from the retailer……..
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:34 am
I also have not verified the actual cost savings of buying in bulk for supplies but consider this. If you think that idea is good – why not multiple you’re buying power by 5. If all districts in Kitsap County were reduced to one imagine the savings. We all saw the the Bremerton Superintendent ‘s salary and car alowance published here but think of the staff times 5. We are punishing our children for allowing the schools to not combine districts. Money is reduced and we pay huge for their upward mobility as training sites for future administrators. some say combining 5 districts into one would increase the size akin to Seattle’s 40,000 – so let’s consider two districts: combine Bremerton and South Kitsap; and also combine Central Kitsap, North Kitsap and Bainbridge Island. The two districts could combine buying power with a memorandum of agreement. Do not let them attempt to spin this with what is best for the kids – their motive is their own greed.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Wow. I didn’t know the schools receive such a rebate. I long felt that the supply list for too long. It averaged, I remember when my kids were in grade school, at about $60 a student. So, I didn’t do it. I read through the list. It would call for a box of colored pencils, pencils, glue sticks, loose leaf paper, etc.
We would go through our supply cabinet and pull out their supplies from previous years. Why would a child need a brand new box of colored pencils when they had boxes from past years? Why would they need new pencils or pens, when we had dozens around the house? Plus, we always went to the fair right before school started, so we had promotional pencils and pens galore.
When it came time to buy the things we didn’t have, we would go through the lists of store flyers and circle the sales. I remember one year sitting down with my daughter. She saw that one store had two glue sticks for $1.00, another offered three for the same price, a third had four. Since four office supply stores – Rite Aid, Office Depot, Staples and Walgreens are right on the same corner in Port Orchard, we could hit them all easily and with little gas expenditure.
It taught her to be frugal. Essentially we only bought the stores’ “lost leaders,” or sale items.
That way we could bring down the costs to under $20 a student. By the time they got to Junior High and High School we would need the more expensive calculators, but you only need one per student and you can keep them longer than a year, too.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:03 am
I have told my husband the exact same thing, the schools should buy in bulk and charge the parents a fee. Anyone that has ever done any buying for a large corporation knows the same thing…combine your buying power!
I am glad to see that I am not the only one that is thinking this way!
There is an additional benefit of it causing the teachers to be more consistent with their requests and to really evaluate what their needs are. It also means that the kids will all have the same stuff, no need to feel like they don’t have the right items or feel like the odd one out.
What I have noticed is the kids “extra stuff” doesn’t come back home! One year a particular teacher wanted art pastels and not once did I see a project come home with that media used. When I inquired I was told that the lesson plan had changed. The unused pastels never came home at the end of the year.
Three kids means a lot of hassle supply shopping and lots of $$.