GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. — Educators in Guilford County went shopping for classroom supplies at no cost at the nonprofit Guilford Education Alliance. Teachers signed up for 30-minute slots to get what they need for the school year.

What You Need To Know

  • The supplies come from donations 

  • There is a 30-minute time slot for teachers to sign up

  • New teachers will have the opportunity to shop in early August

 

The school supplies that the teachers grab help kids, whose families can’t afford the rising price of school supplies, make it through the year.

Cynthia Moore, a fifth-grade teacher at Guilford Elementary School, has been coming to the teacher supply warehouse for years now. She looks forward to it each summer.

“I look for my email. If I don't check my email over the summer, I check it for that, you know,” Moore said. “I get excited to get ahead and to go here, because if I can get a jump start, then it lessens my shopping too.” 

In the back of the building there are lots of items that will spruce up the classroom. There’s no point system, so it’s pretty much free game.

“This is like a kid in a candy store. I would say once again, I try to, you know, minimize my grabbing or my, you know, usage and try to only get what I know that I can really use and that I'm going to take back to my classroom,” Moore said.

Over the years Moore has cut her spending on supplies, because she uses sales, donations from friends and family and items left over from last year, but when she just started teaching, she was spending a lot.

“It was in the $500s or $800, the tax guy was like, ‘What are you buying?’ But, you know, that includes the ink, paper, color paper, the cutesy things that you want them to use for projects,” Moore said. “I will say that I have become wiser about using the supplies in the school and making a way out of it.”

Inflation has hit school supplies particularly hard. The National Retail Federation says families with kids in elementary or high school will spend an average of $864 on supplies this year. That’s nearly $170 more than in 2019.