Families eager to return to in-person school after more than a year of remote learning are expected to spend record amounts on school supplies for K-12 students this year.
“The pandemic forced parents and their school-aged children to adapt to virtual learning quickly, and they did it with an incredible amount of resolve and flexibility,” said Matthew Shay, CEO of the National Retail Foundation, which reported that parents would spend on average $848.90 on school items, an increase of $59 from last year.
Total expected spending on back-to-school expenses is projected to exceed $37 billion this year, compared with nearly $34 billion in 2020 and about $26 billion in 2019.
“We enter the new school year with plans to return to the classroom, and retailers are prepared to help Americans find and purchase whatever they need to make this transition as seamless as possible,” Shay said.
Many schools have already returned for in-person classes this semester with mixed results. Several districts have entered temporary quarantine periods after several students and staff were exposed to COVID-19. For example, in Hillsborough County, Florida, which houses the seventh-largest public school district in the nation, more than 10,000 students have had to quarantine just a week into the school year due to over 1,800 confirmed infections among students and staff, ABC News reported.
Earlier this week, a marathon Hillsborough County School Board meeting concluded with local officials setting a 30-day mask mandate with the option for parents to excuse their children, a workaround that many parents and health experts have argued renders the mask mandates toothless.
In Mississippi, about 20,000 students are in quarantine after COVID-19 exposure. Nashville public schools, meanwhile, reported that more than 1,000 students and staff are quarantining after a week of in-person instruction. Of the 95 staff in isolation, 52 were confirmed positive for COVID-19, while 207 of the 980 students quarantined have tested positive. The Metropolitan Nashville Board of Public Education had instituted an indoor mask mandate that would also apply to school buses about a week before classes resumed on Aug. 10.
Despite the debacle over masking in schools and some trepidation about the spread of the highly contagious delta variant on campuses, the NRF survey showed that families have been willing to shell out more money than usual for back-to-school preparation, particularly on clothes and electronics, such as laptops and tablets.
Back-to-school shoppers plan to spend $21 more on average than last year on electronics, bringing total spending to nearly $300 on average, and $19 more on clothes, bringing the total to more than $250 on average.
“Consumers are spending more on items like electronics and clothing as they make plans for students to resume activities in person this fall,” said Phil Rist, vice president of Prosper Insights & Analytics, the group that conducted the survey. “For those, in particular, with children in elementary to high school, shoppers are putting the largest portion of their budgets toward electronics, new clothes, and accessories.”
Results of the survey, which was conducted in early July, noted that families still had a majority of their shopping to complete before summer vacation ended. At that time, over three-quarters of parents of children in grades K-12 were still waiting for lists provided by school officials of the necessary supplies. Families are more comfortable shopping in brick-and-mortar stores now than they were this time last year, but online remains the top destination for K-12 shoppers.
