We’re heading into late August, which can mean only one thing:
back to school. As students
– and their parents’ pocketbooks – gear up for this year, see
what local kids have to say about the best back-to-school
supplies
n By Kelly Savio
Staff Writer
Across the South Valley, store aisles featuring notebooks, folders, pens, protractors and binders are looking decidedly ravaged. It’s time for back-to-school shopping, and parents’ credit cards are getting quite a workout as their children sweep the aisles looking for the “cool” supplies.
Julia Galvan, 10, stood in the Gilroy Target this week considering the pencil bags. There were cylindrical denim bags, rectangular corduroy bags, flashy metallic bags with sequins and multi-color felt bags. She quickly decided on the purple and brown felt bag.
“I like this one because it’s cute and I love purple,” said Julia, who will be a fifth-grader at Sacred Heart Parish School in Hollister. “I wouldn’t want one of the sequin ones because they look weird.”
Julia’s mom, Angelica, was shopping for her three children. She had already spent more than $200 on supplies this year – and she isn’t alone. The amount of money families spend in August doing their back-to-school shopping is second only to money they spend shopping during the holiday season, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Last year, Americans spent $6.6 billion getting their kids ready to head back to classes.
Donna Zimmerman of Morgan Hill grimaced at the thought of how much money she would be spending sending her three children back to school. As she shopped with two of her children, 12-year-old Jeremy and 9-year-old Jacob, she asked them how much things cost as they put items into the shopping cart.
The general consensus of students seems to be that there aren’t any “hot items” they had to have to be cool this year. Mostly, Jeremy and Jacob said, it’s cool to simply pick out the things they like.
Many students recycle as many of their favorite items from the previous year as possible.
Joey Hayes of Prunedale said he bought a new binder because last year’s was too beat up to reuse.
“I also had to buy another backpack because my zipper broke on my backpack from last year,” said Joey, a junior at North Monterey County High School. “The only thing that matters to me when I pick out the school supplies I need is that they work for my classes and that I like them. My new backpack is green, my favorite color, and it works with my wheelchair. I’ve had a few different kinds of backpacks in the past, and some of them didn’t work.”
In high school, students don’t really pay attention to what school supplies the other kids have, Joey pointed out. Instead, they pay attention to what kind of cars they have and how the cars look.
“You check out the cars, and you see what people have done to their cars to make them special,” he explained. “I saw one person who had colored lights under their car so it looked like it glowed, and that was cool. But paying attention to school supplies isn’t really an issue. It’s kind of ridiculous if people do care what kind of stuff other people have. They’re school supplies – you need them for class. I don’t know what can be so great about things you need.”
