An Evanston non-profit is distributing $20,000 in school supplies to 1,000 District 65 students this weekend — but organizers say that meets less than half the need for supplies among poverty-level students.
Juliet Bond of Evanston COPE, says 43 percent of students in the district are eligible for free or reduced price lunches — or roughly 2,400 students — the usual marker for student poverty.
“A lot of kids feel really embarrassed to come into school if they don’t have the right supplies,” Bond said. “Unfortunately, sometimes teachers will get frustrated with kids who show up what they consider to be unprepared for class, which that may not be [a choice] for certain kids. It might be, ‘my mother couldn’t afford to buy supplies for me.’”
Evanston COPE, or Caring Outreach by Parents in Evanston, works with District 65 to purchase $20 supply kits through a bulk ordering vendor. Though several local businesses offered to collect physical donations, Bond said that such efforts actually require more work and run the risk of disappointing students if some donations feature designs or characters that others do not.
“The bulk ordering is really key, because were we to try to tackle buying the supplies ourselves it would really be so much more expensive,” Bond said. “Some organizations have [asked to] set up a bin, but it’s just less chaotic if everything’s from the bulk supplier because it’s all uniform.”
The bulk supplies purchased by COPE are divided into kits designed with the needs of students in each grade in mind. Kits were distributed at St. Mark’s Church on Ridge Avenue on Friday afternoon and today.
Although the 2016 school supply drive raised the most funds in the history of COPE’s involvement, Bond said that the full need for supplies in District 65 is not met.
“About four years ago, there was an organization in Evanston, Kids And School Supplies, that had been doing the school supply drive every year and averaged about $35,000 a year,” she said. “I’m not sure they would say they met the full need, either.”
Though not a direct response to low-income students’ needs for school supplies, some District 65 schools eliminate the need for school supply shopping through a bulk-supply ordering system supported by their PTAs.
One of these schools, Washington Elementary, has entirely eliminated school supply lists. Instead, parents contribute $35, or $25 if their students receive free or reduced price lunch, to a budget for teachers to order the exact supplies they need for their classrooms. Students then share supplies rather than keeping their own.
According to Washington Elementary Principal Kate Ellison, the system used by Washington helps to mitigate the impact of financial insecurity on students’ access to school supplies.
“First of all, it eliminates any kind of discrepancy in type of supplies,” Ellison said. “All the supplies are the same, so it kind of levels that playing field. The second thing is, all of the supplies are taken care of for all of the kids. We work hard to get all of the fees collected, but if for some reason the fee is not collected, it doesn’t impact that child’s ability to have a supply. The teachers order supplies for the whole class in the spring, so on day one all the supplies are ready, organized, for all of the kids to access.”
While bulk supply systems are also in place at Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, Lincolnwood Elementary, and Martin Luther King, Jr. School of the Arts’ kindergarten, Washington’s is the only program that provides supplies to all students in this manner.
No matter what, if any, ordering supply is used by a school, none of the District 65 schools provide backpacks or supplies to be used for homework.
“There are some kids…that when they come home to do homework, they may not have school supplies,” said Lise Jinno of Foundation 65. “The school supply drive right now, they will ask you what school you attend, but that doesn’t preclude you from getting school supplies. One thing that school supply programs don’t provide no matter what is backpacks. That’s a really important part of a kids school identity, being able to have that to bring their lunch, to bring their supplies to school, is really important.”
Though most school supply drives are geared toward middle and elementary schoolers, some high schoolers also struggle to get the supplies they need. Currently, Evanston Township High School students are not given an option for any sort of supply assistance and are not typically provided for through COPE.
“The most sort of heartbreaking moment we saw over and over again [last year] was actually with the ETHS students,” Bond said. “They came in with a younger sister or brother in order to get supplies and would kind of whisper to us, ‘do you have anything for me?’”
Bond said that while high school students were provided for on an as-possible basis in both 2015 and 2016, COPE hopes to be able to officially offer supplies to ETHS students in 2017.
The COPE school supply drive “really does support any student that needs it in our district, and I think that’s a really fantastic thing,” Jinno said.