From notebooks and pencils to binders and scientific calculators, the Montauk School’s got all school supplies covered this coming school year.
Jack Perna, the district superintendent, announced this week that families of children who attend the school won’t have to buy their own supplies.
The idea originated with the school board, he said, which first questioned why kids were being asked to buy things like wipes for tables and desks. Then, Mr. Perna said, the board questioned why kids had to buy anything at all.
“There are some families who might find a couple of hundred dollars at the end of the summer a hit that they don’t need to have, or worse, in the middle of winter when we need some more supplies,” he said. “I’ve gone through that life. I know what that’s like. You have your summer job and summer pay, and in the winter you go without.”
The school board took students’ supplies into account when planning for the 2019-20 budget. The total supplies budget, including other classroom materials and teachers’ supplies, too, is $54,000. It represents less than 3 percent of the district’s approximately $19 million budget.
The Montauk School is also, for the first time, providing a Chromebook computer for every student in grades three through eight this year. The school has 316 children enrolled so far, down slightly from 319 in the 2018-19 school year.
Shelling out money for school supplies helps level the playing field in a way, Mr. Perna said. He is known as an advocate for equity in education, and speaks often about pooling resources and consolidating districts to make things as fair as possible.
“When you compare Springs to Montauk, we don’t seem to worry about half the things they worry about. That’s unfair,” Mr. Perna said. “Compare Wyandanch and Montauk, or Montauk and Jericho. Take it to the state level. You go upstate, especially now with the way upstate is suffering economically. . . . The schools up there have no property tax base. It is so unfair that we have what we have and they have to suffer like that.”
The Huntington Backpack Index, which studies costs and inflation in the price of school supplies nationally, said in the summer of 2018 the average annual cost of supplies for elementary school children was $637. For middle school children it was $941, and for high school children it was $1,355. Those averages were actually slightly down from 2017 figures, according to the index’s 2018 report.
The Montauk School Board “has been hearing good things” in response to the decision to buy the supplies, Mr. Perna said. “I feel great about it, but it really was the school board’s idea, and they should be given the credit for it. We’re lucky. We have a great school board, a great community. They support education and the programs we want to do because they want to do what’s best for the kids also.”