School supplies are in high demand, short supply

Published 4:21 pm Friday, August 8, 2008

POULSBO — A closet similar in size to Harry Potter’s under the stairs is slowly filling up with stacks of school supplies.

Against one wall cardboard boxes of wide-ruled notebooks gradually climb higher. A few plastic bins brim with pens and a handful of bags with crayons, folders, glue, watercolors and lunch boxes are scattered around the floor.

But the stash of supplies accumulating at Fishline for the annual “School Supplies Program” is not nearly what is needed to support the more than 200 North Kitsap School District families who aren’t financially able to afford the classroom necessities.

Fishline Executive Director Karen Timken said last year $653 in monetary donations and $3,188 in supplies have been collected.

On Tuesday, with the Aug. 15 collection deadline perilously close, only $20 and $100-200 in supplies had been donated, which is “not nearly enough” to meet the needs.

Timken estimates 249 families will request the goods, which is up 23 families from last year.

The reason supplies are down and demand is up is due to hard economic times.

“They can’t afford to get the supplies because in many cases it’s that or gas to get to work,” Timken said. “They’re people that are working and they’re just overwhelmed with bills. It breaks my heart.”

Timken said many former philanthropists aren’t able to provide donations because they now need the money for their own household budgets.

Fishline will begin distributing the donations on Aug. 21, and if there’s not enough supplies to go around, then unfortunately some families will be out of luck. Fishline doesn’t have money in its budget to help out.

“If we don’t have them, we don’t have them,” Timken said. “We’ll give them to the people we can. There’s nothing else we can do.”

The North Kitsap School District’s supply lists for each building and grade are an exhaustive collection of classroom necessities. While most of the supplies on the list are inexpensive individually — crayons 22 cents, colored markers 88 cents, 150 sheets of notebook paper 50 cents, binders $1.97 — when complied together it can create quite an expense, especially for families purchasing for more than one child.

Nowadays districts across the county facing tough financial times must ask parents to help stock the classrooms. However, the collective supplies are not mandatory.

“Many parents can’t afford the extra supplies and we know that. There is no requirement for any parent to provide shared supplies,” wrote NKSD Director of Communications Chris Case in an e-mail. “We’ve worked hard as a school district and at the individual classroom level to minimize the amount of supplies we request. Many of those lists include a full year’s worth of items, but it isn’t necessary for a student to bring them all on the first day.”

Regardless, parents feel the crunch.

Crystal Burr, a Central Kitsap mother of a fourth- and sixth-grader was at an area retailer on Tuesday stocking up. She spent $75 on the supplies, and that’s with price comparisons and buying generic. A process Burr said is overwhelming.

“Making ends meet now is hard, and the beginning of school time it gets harder,” she said between doing price checks on glue sticks. “This supply list I’m given doesn’t stay at home. I have to send my fourth-grader with two dozen No. 2 pencils and reams of copy paper and those stay at school. So I have to buy extra supplies for homework.”

Rising alongside the prices and requests are the number of students who arrive lacking on the first day of school.

Karla Laubach, a seventh-grade science teacher at Kingston Middle, has noticed there’s a number of kids who don’t have supplies on a consistent basis. Especially the more specific supplies like scientific calculators, which cost between $10 and $30.

“Fewer kids are having what they need,” Laubach said. She said some of it is due to a lack of responsibility on the child’s part to remember a pencil and some paper, but for others it’s because they don’t have a container to transport the supplies. “Some of it’s due to the fact that they can’t even afford backpacks to keep their stuff in. I’ve seen that.”

All agree it’s sad.

But Timken remains hopeful Fishline will meet its quota, as Poulsbo is a very generous community. She said sometimes people won’t donate because they think giving a pack of pencils or pens isn’t enough to matter. But that’s not true, every little item helps.

“I’m very hopeful,” Timken said. “North Kitsap has always come through for us in the best way they can.”

Fishline needs it all, but is mainly desperate for plastic supply boxes, pens, No. 2 pencils and erasers.

Supplies can be dropped off at Fishline or checks mailed to NKFL, P.O. Box 1517 Poulsbo 98370. Checks should be made out to NKFL and write “school supplies” on the memo line.