PHOENIX - Back-to-school shopping can get stressful and expensive. So we took one Valley school district’s supply list and hit the stores to see how much a typical family will shell out!
The 2019 list usually includes loose-leaf paper and plenty of other stuff—and one item after another starts to add up. But you don't want to head back to class without what you need.
For some middle schoolers, that includes:
-one binder
-dividers
-loose leaf paper
-4 spiral notebooks
-highlighters
-black pens
-pencils
We caught up with Catalina, a fifth-grader getting the necessities.
"This is our composition notebook that I need for whatever class," she said.
New numbers show families are shelling out hundreds of dollars on school supplies, according to Huntington Bank's Backpack Index.
"We have multiple composition notebooks, and we have a ruled notebook just in case, colored pencils all on the list," she said.
Store employees tell us more people are price shopping than ordering supplies online and picking them up curbside for convenience.
We got everything on our list and headed for the checkout line. Our basket came in at just under $30. Not a bad start, but again, this was the bare minimum, each district will vary on what students should have on a day-to-day basis.