A great big ‘Thank You’ to the 10 Foothill Families who showed up on Thursday, August 11th, to sort a mountain of school supplies! Those supplies have been delivered to the classrooms, and the teachers have started bundling everything together for our students. This is our third year of doing this at Foothill, and it was our smoothest year yet. Similar to last year, the cost of all of the school supplies together will come to an average of between $35 and $40 per student.
If you are an adult and you grew up in the United States, you probably remember the yearly tradition of getting the supply lists just before school started, and then perhaps going to three or four stores to get everything the teacher had asked for. If you are an adult of a certain age, you might even remember the agony of being teased about the binder you chose (Trapper Keeper, anyone?).
California has a state law that forbids public schools from asking families to buy school supplies or requiring families to pay any fees for field trips or school activities. This puts school districts in the unfortunate position of having to choose between staff salaries and technology budgets, vs. field trips and school supplies.
The PTAs in Saratoga ask for donations from our families for the yearly school supplies. In this way, the district can use their funds for salaries, curriculum, and technology. The PTAs also provide a resource grant to teachers for curriculum and materials in their classroom and we fund the maintenance of the office equipment, we expect this cost to come to nearly $70 per student. The rest of your PTA donation goes to fund PTA programs. For more information on how we expect to spend our donation dollars on our kids this year, look here.
