Parents are quite startled when they are presented with the list of school supplies that are needed by every child in the family. Not only are there many pens, pencils and under-liners needed, but the students are responsible for bringing to school binders and paper that will fit them. Then there will be other paper on the list that everyone will need.
At the end of the shopping trip, the family might have accumulated a lot of bulk just from the binders and paper items that were on the school supplies shopping list. Some parents will not even consider buying a book bag for their child until the binders and paper items are purchased. They found out from previous years that many book bags will not allow certain binders to be inserted into them.
Some school teachers have their own preference to the binders that children use for special projects. Parents might be tasked with buying see through folders in place of binders for many of the classes that their children will take. Some school boards are very rigid about the items that are placed on the school supplies shopping lists that are sent out to every parent's just weeks before school is to start.
There can be dire consequences when the school board's decisions do not match those of some parents. The school board feels very strongly when some parents do their own thing and buy just what they want their child to use throughout the school year. The child might even get a failing grade because they used the wrong binder for a project.
Parents get very intense when this happens and are not shy about letting the school, the teacher, and in some cases, they might even take their disgruntled views to the school board meetings that are held at the courthouse each month. They might prepare a speech where the binders and paper items are thoroughly discussed. The parents might point out that one binder is just as good as another and that only the price difference for each of them is the real problem.
The issue of paper size might come up a time or two in these meetings with the school board and some of them might be very good points. Some binders will allow the standard sized paper to fit in nicely, but the ones that are on the present school list allow the paper to hang past the margins and well past the dividers that are meant to separate the homework assignments and the school projects assigned by a teacher throughout the school year.
The school board is certain to take certain points under consideration until the next school board meeting. During that time lapse, they might assign someone to visually inspect the various binders and papers that are offered at the mass merchandising retailers in town. They become enlightened on the various styles and decorative binders that are available for purchase in each store that is visited, and really become aware of what dilemmas that parents face when they go to buy the binders and paper items that are on the school supplies list that they create every year.