“Question: What color is this folder?”
Jessica Conte, the mother of a third-grader from Commack, asked that question while shopping for back-to-school supplies at a Target store with her aunt, Maria Ambrosio, a former teaching assistant who lives in Huntington.
This should be a simple question that any kindergartener can answer.
But Ambrosio hesitates, through no fault of his own.
A typical fourth-grader’s back-to-school shopping list includes these essentials. Credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost
On a mission to fulfill back-to-school shopping lists from school districts across Long Island, parents step into the testing grounds of their local stores’ school supply aisles, usually with printed lists in hand. As they soon discover, their task is easier said than done.
Families plan to spend an average of $586 per child on back-to-school shopping this year, about the same as last year and down just $11, according to Deloitte’s annual back-to-school survey of 1,200 U.S. parents with children in kindergarten through 12th grade. That spending can include classroom supplies, clothing, shoes, backpacks and technology gear. “In short, it’s an exhausting time for parents,” the Deloitte survey said.
A “tense” quest
“Orange?” Ambrosio replied unsurely.
Signs on shelves at the Huntington Station Target store have red lettering.
“It’s red-orange but it says ‘red,’ so can I have it?” asks Ms. Conte, 38, a high-school art teacher. She’s not sure if there’s any particular reason her son’s shopping-list folder has to be red. Is red for math or reading? Will the teacher say, “Give me the red folder?” She’ll add it to her pile.
“It’s nerve-wracking,” Ambrosio, 63, says of shopping for back-to-school supplies.
At the Farmingdale Walmart, Ekamjot Singh, 10, of Bethpage, is taking on the challenge of collecting all 31 items on his school list. He has the items on his phone and is enlisting the help of his family members to go find what they need.
“We have to run to this aisle, that aisle,” Ekamjot says. “Did you get a ruler?” he asks his brother, Karanprit, 13, as the brother returns to the shopping-cart base managed by their father, Kulwinder Singh. Ekamjot’s advice: Get multiple cell phones; each person should have one for communication.
“It’s teamwork,” said Kulwinder Kaur, 35, a mother who works as a babysitter.
Are the scissors latex free?
Shopping for them is harder than it first seems, because back-to-school gift lists don’t just call for “boxes of crayons” and leave it to parents to choose from. While specific requests for quantity and size help schools ensure every child gets what they need, the specifics can create headaches for parents shopping for them.
Copiague resident Jose Hernandez, 32, checks a school supply list in Spanish while shopping for his daughter, Stephanie, who is in sixth grade, at the Farmingdale Walmart. Photo by Newsday/Beth Whitehouse
For example, a typical fourth-grade list from the Nassau County School District states that scissors must be latex-free. How can shoppers tell if scissors handles are made of plastic or latex? There is nothing on the packaging. Composition notebooks must be black marbled and have wide lines. The lines should be 11/32 inches wide, as opposed to the 9/32 inches spaced between lines in college notebooks. Pens must be blue and erasable so children who are learning to write can correct mistakes. Index cards must be lined and white, which leads one to wonder if their options are limited. Do I buy white with no lines, or colored lines, or drive to another store?
Shopping Tips
There’s probably a more efficient way to create a back-to-school supplies list: Some parents are just ordering from Amazon at home, said Carly Meyer, 34, of Syosset, who is shopping for her son, Liam, 4, who is starting kindergarten in the district.
Beause Francois, 55, of Huntington, has a list of must-have items for her 10-year-old daughter, Layla, who will be in the fifth grade. Photo by Newsday/Beth Whitehouse
Karen Campos, 27, of Huntington Station, has been shopping online in addition to shopping in stores for her daughter Emily, a sixth-grader, and son Mathias, 6, a second-grader. “I’m just looking for deals,” she said. She estimates she’s spent more than $100 just on backpacks and lunch bags for the kids from brick-and-mortar stores, and about $180 on the combined shopping list.
But buying school supplies online isn’t easy. Even completing a list on Amazon is problematic. For example, to check off “Tape, clear, with dispenser, ¾” x 650″, you’d buy a package of six for $11.15. If you buy just the one roll you need for $4.23, it won’t be the size your teacher wants: ½” x 800″. Does a quarter-inch difference in tape width matter? There’s no one to ask.
Other parents create a list on a local retailer’s website and then pick it up in-store.
In some Long Island school districts, school PTAs box up all the items and mail them to families’ homes over the summer. Meyer said she paid $100 for her daughter Hannah, 6, who is entering first grade, to avoid the stress of school shopping. She planned to do the same for her son, who is in kindergarten, but the school didn’t offer it. “I think most people appreciate the convenience, because they don’t even have to go to the store,” she says.
The downside to these options is that they don’t allow kids to have a say in picking out their supplies, which can make them excited about the new school year, said Meyer, a sixth-grade language arts teacher at Plainview. “As a teacher, you want kids to be happy. I remember being so excited about the new Crayola markers.”
Copiague resident Jeanette Lopez, 32, suggests leaving the kids at home to make back-to-school shopping easier. Credit: Newsday/Beth Whitehouse
But not everyone is on board with the idea of getting the kids involved. Jeanette Lopez shudders at the idea of taking her sons, Jayden, 12, an eighth-grader, and Yaniel, 10, a fifth-grader, shopping. When she takes them, “we end up buying what they want instead of what we actually need,” says Lopez, 32, of Copiague. If you’re on a budget, she says, it’s not a good idea.
Shannon Dingworth, 39, of West Babylon, is trying to be grateful that her daughter is only in fifth grade. “When she gets to middle school, it’s a different story,” she says. “Friends, likes, dislikes, what to wear. ‘Mom, why did you buy blue? I wanted green.’ As kids get older, they get pickier,” she says as she and her daughter, Gianna, put shopping bags into a shopping basket for her final year of elementary school.
Beth Whitehouse writes about family, parenting, and fun things to do with kids on Long Island. She was an editor at Newsday and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for her coverage of the TWA Flight 800 crash as part of Newsday’s staff.
