economy |

Photo by evelynishere on Flickr

School starts in 16 days, 2 hours, and 46 minutes as of the writing of this sentence.

Can you tell I’m excited?

My 4 year old is going to kindergarten (don’t worry, he’ll be 5 the day after school starts) and my newly 9 year old will start the fourth grade. There are so many things to see and participate in during the school year that it’s fun for the whole family.

What’s not so fun is back to school shopping.

The clothes we can deal with since we know our boys are going to need school uniforms each year. Plus the school has a locker to exchange gently used items for clothes that fit. We take advantage of that service but always make sure to leave something in its place.

I’m not so complacent about the school supply list. When did we become responsible for buying wall balls for the classroom? Or colored copier paper? I can understand the penciles, paper, and glue but sandwhich bags? And lets not forget the hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes. I told the hubs that if there had been face masks on the list our boys would have been homeschooled this year.

And they still might considering the state of California’s economy.

Teacher’s are being laid off and the size of the classroom is increasing. I wonder how our children are going to learn what they need to pass the useless tests that are required by the state? The teachers cannot keep up with thirty or forty kids in the classroom. Parental involvement is becoming required not requested in many areas but how can parents be involved in the classroom during the day if they have to work?

Can you tell that this makes me hot under the collar?

The hubs and I debated these questions while shopping at Wally World* the other day for those school supplies. We couldn’t solve the problems of our economy but it was nice to commiserate at the checkout stand when we handed the cashier our hard earned cash.

Okay, so this post was more of a rant about the rising costs of just about everything rather than an opinion. Surely someone out there feels the same way? If you do, leave a comment!