Maria Aguayo estimates she spends between $150-$175 on back-to-school shopping for each of her kids. As a single mother with three kids in Washoe County schools, it’s quite a large expense.
But thanks to the Women and Children’s Center of the Sierra, or WACCS, in Reno, her kids were able to pick out their own backpacks filled with notebooks, pencils, and crayons for free. The kids were excited to get the bags and Aguayo said it was a big help to her.
“It is a blessing that there are organizations like WACCS that help people like me, single moms, or in difficult economic situations due to circumstances. And, the staff here at WACCS are a blessing to me and many other families,” she said in Spanish.
This is the fourth year that WACCS has passed out backpacks full of school supplies to students and families at the back-to-school fair. The event takes place the weekend before school starts for WCSD. Even though inflation has cooled slightly from this time last year, WACCS co-executive director Alex Nevarez says the organization is still seeing high need.
“We actually had people lining up at 10 a.m. for the event that started at 12 p.m. and the line was wrapping around the building,” she said. “Even though there was a couple of events going on that day, the need was so large that people were still showing up to our event in huge need.”
WACCS handed out at least 500 backpacks at the event. It tries to pack each bag with enough supplies to last throughout the whole school year, so parents don’t need to do more shopping later. Aguayo and Nevarez said having appropriate, and even cool, supplies helps kids feel happy, excited, and confident for the new year. Nevarez gave a special shout out to Patagonia’s local repair team for supplying 100 backpacks for the event, giving kids even more options to choose from.
According to the National Retail Federation, the average K-12 back-to-school spending per household with students is $890 this summer.
Veronica Rodriguez teaches first grade at Mount Rose K-8 School of Languages in Reno. As part of the school’s two-way dual language immersion program, she teaches her class in Spanish most of the day. But to get all the materials she needs, she has to buy some out of her own pocket or ask the parents of her students to do so.
But during a free shopping event at the Education Alliance’s teachers’ warehouse the week before school started, she got some Spanish-language books for her classroom.
“It helped me a lot because I found Spanish books. So, some of the books that I had in my Amazon list for my students’ parents to buy for me I found them here,” she said.
The free event helps teachers get supplies for their classrooms.
Brittani Haggarty, the Ed Alliance’s collaborative coordinator, said the event and the warehouse, which teachers can utilize throughout the year, are meant to reduce teachers’ out-of-pocket spending on supplies.
“On average, teachers spend between $500 and $1,000 out of their own pockets, that’s nationwide, on supplies. And, as we know, teachers love their students, they have a heart for them to help them succeed,” she said. “So, they will do whatever it takes to get them there. So, we’re really excited to offer this resource to them to alleviate some of that pressure.”
Public teacher pay in Washoe County and Nevada at-large already lags behind other districts’ pay nationwide. Nevada public teachers make $7,500 less than the nationwide average, according to the Nevada State Education Association, the statewide teachers’ union. And paying out-of-pocket for supplies stretches already thin budgets.
Why do teachers have to pay out of pocket for supplies in the first place, though?
McQueen High School teacher and local teacher union board member Mario Fitzpatrick said that institutional budgets are small for individual classrooms.
“Unfortunately, schools are not budgeted a great amount of money for teachers to get supplies for their individual classrooms,” he said. “They operate on pretty small budgets for that and, so, if teachers want to do these creative and different learning opportunities, they’re usually spending money out of their own pockets.”
Jose Davila IV is a corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project.
