{One Mom’s Opinion} St. Tammany is Doing School Supplies All Wrong

During the summer I started reviewing my boys supplies lists for this school year. I decided to do the list on my own rather than purchasing the school supply box our PTA does which was a huge mistake but that’s a post for another day.

I went to the school board website and looked up my school downloaded my list and started shopping. I didn’t look at any of the other schools lists or think I needed to check them out. That was until I heard a rumor that the lists had been made from the main office and all the schools were using the same lists.

I blew it off as a rumor and didn’t think anything about it. We have a wonderful school system in St. Tammany and our school board does a lot to support our teachers. In my mind it didn’t make sense that they would do this.

Flash forward to the first day of school. I sent my school supplies with my son because we missed meet the teacher night. When I picked him up that afternoon, several of the items were in his bag because they weren’t needed. I spoke with a few other friends in different schools who all said the same thing and doing some more digging found out that many teachers had supplies on their lists they didn’t need.

This can only mean that now teachers in our parish are being forced to buy supplies that they need for their classrooms and items we spent money on will be going unused. This is such an unacceptable situation for our teachers. While we all know that teachers go into their own pockets for their classrooms, the district shouldn’t be facilitating the situation.

We have a great school board and very involved administrations in our schools so this is the time to make calls to your school board representatives and let them know how you feel. We can stand up for our teachers and see that this policy is changed for next year.

And while you are at it let’s all send a quick message to our kids teachers and
ask them if there is anything they need that didn’t make the official list.