Find the best deals in the Rocky's School Supply Price Survey

By Maria Cote, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 27, 2008 at 3 p.m.
Updated July 27, 2008 at 8:23 p.m.

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Poll

How much do you expect to spend on school supplies in the coming weeks?

Photo by Ellen Jaskol, Rocky Mountain News

Photo by Associated Press

Pencils, like these from Ticonderoga, may not have changed much, but other school supplies offer a huge new range of styles and capabilities.

Photo by Fiskars

Fiskars Anti-Microbial Scissors could be new to your kids' pencil boxes this year.

Photo by Associated Press

TI-Nspire Graphing Calculator

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Consider us your helpful friends. Don't feel like plowing through a stack of circulars to hunt down the best deals? Not up for driving across town to discover that your favorite store doesn't carry that particular brand of notebook?

Welcome to the 14th annual Rocky School Supply Price Survey.

Glance at our chart and it seems clear that eschewing office-supply and drug stores when back-to-school shopping will save you a bundle. It would be easy to boast and say we're going to save you the equivalent of the price of about 5 gallons of gas by pointing you to Target and other big-box stores, but it's not that straightforward.

Wal-Mart wowed us with bargains, but we were rigid in what we were hunt- ing down. Only Paper Mate pens. Only Crayola crayons. Only Mead notebooks.

So, frankly, we missed some good deals by not accepting, for example, Staples' store-brand notebooks for $1.99.

Also, we didn't bother with mail-in rebates or coupons when we shopped last week. Had we done that, the Crayola markers from Walgreens would have cost the price of a stamp after rebate.

Your best bet would be to gather your circulars or go online to find the best bargains at each store. But after paying for the 5 gallons of gas your SUV will suck up driving from one store to the next, it would pretty much be a wash.

Shopping tips

* Circular in hand, we headed out to Wal-Mart around 1 p.m. July 20. Too late. Spiral notebooks were sold out. Get there soon after the store opens to snatch up those bargains, and don't be afraid to ask for a rain check if the shelves are empty.

* The deals we found were for the week starting July 20. Keep an eye out for sales in coming weeks, and stock up on those bargains. It will probably be a good long time before you see crayons for 22 cents again.

* Enlist your child to bargain-hunt by searching those circulars and clipping the best deals. Challenge him to find the best prices on each item and you'll be building those math skills.

* According to a study by the National Retail Federation, parents will spend $98.46 on school supplies for each child this year. Come in under that number by getting a school-supply list from your school before you head out. Your biggest waste of money? Impulse items. Does your daughter want the $5 sparkly notebook emblazoned with the pink unicorns? Yes. Does she need it? No.

The products

While we attempted to buy the exact same item at each store, we had to bend a bit in some cases.

* Crayons: box of 24, Crayola. (The deal at Rite Aid, however, was $2 for a box of 48 crayons. We couldn't find the 24-count box.)

* Markers: box of eight, Crayola washable

* Pens: 20 Paper Mate pens. This varied from store to store. For instance, Target sold packages of 24 pens for a good deal. Office Depot's Paper Mate pens, while more expensive, were "deluxe" easy-grip pens.

* Notebook paper: two packages, 150 sheets each

* Notebook: Mead 5-Star 100-page notebook. Some stores sold only the deluxe notebook, with a heavier binding.

* Spiral notebooks: six 70-page notebooks

* Folders: six, solid colors with pockets

* Glue: 4-ounce bottle, Elmer's

* Scissors: children's scissors, Fiskars for Kids or Westcott

Hand sanitizer. USB flash drive. Magenta Sharpie. Clean socks.

Quick - what do they have in common? Answer: They're probably going to be in your kid's pencil case when fall comes around.

Long home to an unchanging bunch of yellow No. 2 pencils and thick pink erasers, the pencil case has gotten a makeover. Thanks to the onslaught of kid-focused marketing and the growing presence of technology in children's lives, those perennial favorites have become so last semester.

School-supply basics face competition from a growing array of products tricked out in bright colors and camo prints or plastered with the likeness of everyone from Spider-Man to those ubiquitous kids from High School Musical. The function of these supplies hasn't changed. Kids need to write and have things to write on. They need to transport work to and from home. And they need tools for creative projects. But where the pencil case itself was once the canvas for self-expression and coolness, today the tools inside play that same fetish-object role.

"It's fair to say there will always be room for a No. 2 pencil," says Target spokesman Joshua Thomas. "But what's happening is that these classic back-to- school supplies are evolving."

In addition, the list of supplies considered vital has grown, says Barb Kapinus, senior policy analyst for the National Education Association. Items that didn't exist when most of today's parents were climbing aboard school buses - tiny portable hard drives and scented hand sanitizer - now make the list in many places.

Whether teachers send home exhaustive wish lists or ask only for simple supplies, shopping lists have grown in school districts around the country, says Jennifer Olson, assistant professor of education at Meredith College, in Raleigh, N.C., and mother of two school-agers.

Here are some items that will probably be tucked inside pencil cases (which now come in an eco-friendly variety made from recycled juice boxes) across the country this fall:

* Writing tools: Pens and No. 2 pencils come in a mind-numbing variety of styles aimed at school-age kids (think pencils emblazoned with motivational phrases like Great Job! and pens topped with tiny screens that scroll through images of Hannah Montana). They may also need washable crayons, colored pencils, washable markers, highlighters, dry erase markers and permanent markers. (Even those utilitarian Sharpies, long used by moms to write kids' names in their gym shorts, have become cool. Now endorsed by soccer god David Beckham, Sharpies in shades such as lime or magenta can be personalized with a student's name, catchphrase or clip art.)

* Cut and paste: Classic bottles of Elmer's Glue are still popular, but glue sticks are also in demand. Scissors (the ones you weren't supposed to run with) are still a must, but they've gotten a face-lift, too. Now, says Olson, "they have left-handed or other special scissors to help kids master cutting."

* Doing the numbers: Calculators, restricted by some schools, come in a huge range of styles and capabilities, from cute pink ones for basic math to graphing calculators for trigonometry.

Compasses, protractors and rulers are still around, but even those have been tweaked. Office Depot offers a flexible ruler, and protractors come in vivid hues.

* Data devices: Spiral notebooks and loose-leaf paper aren't the only methods for recording information and transporting work to and from school anymore. Flash drives (also known as jump drives) and CDs can be a necessity for older students. Index cards and Post-it notes also make many must-have lists.

* Germ-battling: Are schools germier than they were a generation ago? Parents seem to think so - or marketers have convinced them it's better to be safe than sorry. Hand sanitizer, hand wipes and packages of tissues are now standard issue.

Unusual elements like clean socks (for erasing white boards) and zip-top plastic bags (for bringing things home) make many lists as well.

It's hard to know whether the trendiest school supplies will help kids to focus on their work or serve as a distraction. Some districts advise against anything but the plainest supplies. But the NEA's Kapinus believes in using "this whole celebration of starting a new school year" with new school supplies to reinforce the importance of learning.

What is clear is that the pressure on parents to buy a slew of slickly designed supplies shows no sign of lagging, despite difficult economic times nationwide. In the back-to-school area at Target, says Thomas, "literally, it seems limitless what you can find, what you can do with a pencil box."

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