Cindy Grosz: Are Parents Really Getting Ready For School This August?

As the summer days get minutes shorter and the first days of August roll around, parents, students and educators prepare for the end of summer and go back to school.

Who doesn’t go through the coupons and promotions for school supplies, catch up on required reading and making those carpool arrangements.

August used to be melancholy.   But, like everything else, August resolutions for a great school year are marred this year by the high costs of education both in dollars and common sense.

School supplies prices are up like everything else.  According to a recent Morning Consult survey, only 36% of the 2,178 parents surveyed in the US feel financially prepared to spend on the often high-priced items their children will need during the back-to-school season. That's a decrease from 52% last year, when many parents could rely on stimulus checks and early child tax credit payments to help ease the financial burden brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This survey contradicts another, just like our school system.

Spending on school clothes and supplies this year is on track to match last year's record of $37 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. The group estimates that families with school children will spend an average of $864, or $15 more than last year.

Nineteen states are having sales tax holidays and many are buying less and spending more.  August vacations and extra expenses are being put on hold this year to purchase supplies. Credit card purchases and borrowing money is up.

Are Parents Winning?

Not in their wallets and not in the war.   I’m not talking about Ukraine, I am referring to the war at home, fighting the enemy within, our teachers unions, our failing public schools and a curriculum filled with bias, prejudice, lies and failure.

It’s almost a year since that now infamous Loudon County School Board meeting where parents spoke up and were later called “domestic terrorists” by the Attorney General.

Has much changed to guarantee our schools teach fundamentals like math and English reading and writing schools?

We can honestly say that like the aforementioned school supplies rising costs, parents are losing.

Parents became candidates for school board positions, some won, but many lost.  On Long Island, in many areas where republicans won statewide and county elections, teachers unions endorsed candidates won.

Worse, schools around the country are allowing minor students, including elementary school students discuss their sexual orientations without parental consent. Sex education and gender identity issues are still overtaking English and math skills for too many of our students younger than ten years old.

Iowa Lawsuit

In a state considered conservative by most, an advocacy group called Parents Defending Education filed a lawsuit against an Iowa school district last week challenging its policy of letting students form “gender support plans” without parental knowledge or consent.

Merit-oriented schools became lottery schools based on ethnicity.  And standardized testing is either being eliminated or watered-down so much so that they mean nothing.

NYC Lawsuit

A state supreme court judge on Friday ordered the city’s Department of Education to vacate its $38 billion budget, ruling that the city did not follow state protocols when it passed it.

Judge Lyle Frank issued the ruling Friday morning, a day after he said he planned to require the city to toss the budget.

The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of parents and educators who argued that the City Council skirted a state education law in passing the budget.

DeSantis Takes Charge

Governor Ron DeSantis has initiated multiple steps to single out Florida as a state to teach civics excellence and patriotic, pro-American history lessons, separating church and state in schools, and signed into law legislation prohibiting any talk of gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade, and such discussions through high school if they are not done in a manner that is “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.”

DeSantis is being targeted as donors opposing his stance from around the country are helping democrats in Florida running in elections this year.

So common sense America First taxpayers are still losing and all children are the victims.  I will keep you up to date as schools open nationwide within the next few weeks.