Video: Back To School Sticker Shock

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Parents, you may want to cover your children’s ears. The first day of school is only weeks away. Parents may also want to cover their eyes when they see the bill for supplies.

There was a time when all you needed were your books, some paper, and a couple of number 2 pencils, but times have changed.

Back to school means back to the school supply aisle.

Third grade teacher, Pam Pugh, has been teaching for thirty years, and says supply lists have grown each year.

“Changed quite a bit, not just technological, but there are all kinds of new materials and things that teachers use, not just in the classroom, but for children at home.”

Five dollars here, and three dollars there, adds up fast and gets higher as the grade does.

“When you get into junior high, high school, you have 7 teachers a day, and each teacher will have different requirements, and some teachers might want you to have a really big notebook, and others may not, but then you’ve got all of the calculators and things like that they need, so the supply list probably gets a little bit more diverse,” says Pugh.

Blakeney Tally is jumping into middle school this year, and her supply list jumped up too.

“I would say pretty much the same amount, but it’s more expensive because you have to buy double of what you normally buy.”

Buying double or more for some supplies, which doubles the money spent.

“We had to buy 5 composition books, and 5 regular notebooks, and we had to buy pencils and pens,” says Tally.

Pugh says there are ways to save bucks. Her school helps by selling school supply packets.

“By the time you think about going to the different schools, to different, I’m sorry, different stores to purchase the supplies, you really save a lot of money because you don’t have to fight the crowds and search for certain, particular things that’s required.”

Extra required expenses on top of money spent on supplies is why Tally shops for deals.

“We definitely look for sales that go into our price range, instead of like out of our price range, like $10 dollars for just one notebook, we definitely look for $five dollars because that’s more of our price range.”

After the buggy was loaded with basic essentials, like pencils, paper, and folders, we checked out to see how much we spent. The total came out to be $76.25.