Anne Arundel County Public Schools held its annual back-to-school expo Saturday at Abundant Life Church in Glen Burnie, Md., giving parents an opportunity to stock up on free backpacks and supplies, the Gazette reports. The Office of School and Family Partnerships gave away 900 backpacks and school supplies for about 350 students on a first-come-first-served basis.
“With this economy, we don’t want parents to be stressed if they can’t afford supplies for their children,” the paper quoted Teresa Tudor, senior manager of the office, as saying. She added that in the past, donations to a surplus fund had been going well, but she wasn’t confident the fund would be sufficient this year. The partnership uses the fund to purchase supplies for students who can’t afford what they need.
In addition to donations from church members, the county’s Department of Health was there, along with principals from Glen Burnie High School and several schools that feed into it. The event last year, held in Annapolis, had lines of students who showed up to get the free supplies.
Actual figures are yet to be released, but the National Retail Federation expected the average parent to spend $688.62 this summer on their children for back-to-school items, including clothing, up from $603.63 last year, a 14 percent increase, shown in the graph above.
Of the total amount parents are expected to spend, $246.10 will be spent on clothes (36%) and $217.88 will be spent on electronics (32%). The federation said sales were expected to be spread out over the entire summer, so this may have been the tail end, with kids showing up whose parents had been unable still to purchase the needed school supplies.