Dear Superintendent-

I know you're very busy planning for the upcoming school year.  And I know the budget is very tight.  Heck, my budget is quite tight as well, so I feel your pain.  I bet you don't have much time for a little, tiny issue I would like to share with you.  It's not about the $45 per child "materials fee" which, I assume, covers the math workbook my daughter is neither allowed to write in...nor keep.  I'll let that one slide for another time.  It's also not about the $250 bus-riding fee I'm about to pay.  I even voted for that one, if it meant letting a teacher keep her job.

My slight, minor problem is with the classroom supply list.  More specifically, it's the matter of the 48 pencils my fourth grader is being asked to supply.  48 pencils.  For each child?  Surely that must be a typing error.  Or maybe it's not, because I noticed that the 3rd grade supply list includes 60 pencils...so apparently, I'm getting off easier this year.   How can that possibly be right??

According to my calculations, since the budgets have been cut and class sizes have increased, if every child in a classroom of say...25 kids, brings in 48 pencils...that's a whole lot of pencils.  In fact, that's 1,200 pencils for the classroom for the school year.  Really?  I hope my daughter brings home her very own hand-written copy of War and Peace so she gets the use of 1,200 pencils.  Or is the budget so very bad this year, the schools need to turn down the heat, and the pencils will be used for kindling for the wood-burning stoves?  I can't think of another reason 25 kids would go through 1,200 pencils in 9 months.

I can remember going to grade school with my very own cigar-box pencil box, with two of my very own pencils on which I carefully wrote my name in teeny tiny letters down the side.  It was fun to sharpen away my name until it disappeared and it was time to pull out the second pencil.  If I needed another pencil after spring break, I asked my mom, and she sent me to school with another pencil.  I knew that the teeth marks in the pencil I was using were my own, and the ear wax on the eraser was all mine.  My kids don't have that luxury.  Who knows what is on those 1,200 community pencils they'll be using?  Ugh.

I would, therefore, like to inform you of my silent, parental protest.  My daughter will not be bringing in 48 pencils.  She will only be bringing in 24.  And even that is making my head explode.  I can afford to send 48, but I simply choose not to contribute to the ridiculousness of inadequate pencil mangement in the classroom.  If you find that her classroom cannot get by with only 1,176 pencils, please feel free to contact me...after Christmas break...and I will consider contributing the additional 24 pencils with my sincere apology for doubting the authenticity of your supply needs.

Thank you for your time and understanding.