While a complete overhaul of America’s broken child-care market could ease the strain on families, it would require big investments that likely will remain off the political table. While President-elect Trump for decreasing child-care costs via tariffs, neither he nor has endorsed any specific policies.

There is, however, a partial solution that would bring immediate relief to parents, offset recent price increases, and boost mothers’ employment rates: update the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), a tax credit for working families.

As it stands, the CDCTC is not particularly generous, doesn’t keep pace with inflation, and is only available to some working parents paying for care. The maximum credit for most families with two or more children is $1,200 per year—a number that hasn’t been updated . 

Proposed updates to the CDCTC would more than offset increases in child-care prices driven by post-pandemic inflation. The introduced last January would increase benefits so that working families could receive up to $8,000 each year—$4,000 per child for up to two children—and tie benefit levels to inflation so that the tax credit’s value would not erode over time.

To understand how this change would affect a typical family, consider a married couple with two children and average, middle-class incomes. Suppose that they were paying $15,000 a year for child care before the pandemic. An approximately 20% increase in the cost of living since then has added an extra $3,000 to their child-care bill. However, the proposed CDCTC expansion would increase their benefits by $6,800, more than covering the extra cost.

The proposed changes are very similar to a under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 that the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated would cost the federal government . This compares to more than $110 billion for the better-known Child Tax Credit expansion. And a permanent increase in CDCTC generosity would have broad benefits for the economy that could help to offset some of its costs. For example, my research suggests that expanding the credit would increase tax revenues by who could access child care needed to join the labor force.

A reformed child care credit would bring additional benefits for lower-income families. Under the current system, benefits kick in only at higher income levels because the credit is nonrefundable: It does not help those who earn too little to pay taxes after deductions. My own calculations show that a married couple with two children would need to earn nearly $30,000 to receive any benefit from the CDCTC and nearly $40,000 to be eligible for the full $1,200 credit. As a result, the credit fails to reach the lowest-income families, even as child care consumes a larger portion of their household budgets.

In line with this, my research shows that allowing families to receive a tax refund would to an additional 5 percent of single parents, who are already working and paying for care but have incomes too low to benefit from a nonrefundable tax credit. Thus, like the , the CDCTC would reduce poverty, which could translate to more opportunities for those families and lower government costs in the long term.

Several other proposed adjustments to the federal tax code target the high cost of child care, but none would offset price increases for many families.

For example, the contribution limit for dependent care flexible spending accounts, which allow families to set aside money before taxes and then spend it on child care. The contribution limit has been capped at $5,000 since 1986, and the proposed legislation would increase it to $10,000 or more. This may sound like a big change, but it wouldn’t make much of a dent into families’ care costs. For the middle-class married couple with two children, doubling the contribution limit would, at most, generate an additional $600 per year in tax savings. Moreover, of workers have access to these accounts, and most of the .

Another proposal would increase the tax break for businesses that provide child care to their employees. Unfortunately for parents, very few employers appear interested in going this route. Only about of corporate tax returns include claims for the Employer-Provided Child Care Credit. As a result, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service deems the credit to have “.”

Adjusting the tax code won’t solve America’s child-care crisis. It won’t, for instance, directly increase pay among workers, who tend to than animal caretakers and parking lot attendants. It won’t shorten for care. And it won’t fully offset the average family’s child-care costs. Fixing these aspects of our broken market are worthwhile ambitions, but they will require significant increases in government spending that are unlikely to pass Congress anytime soon. In the meantime, if policymakers want to bring immediate relief to , updating the child care credit is a promising option.

Jamie Epps did not expect to spend a lot of her own money on school supplies when she decided to take a teaching job for the fall of 2023.

Her mother convinced her to teach as a source of income while Epps attended nursing school. A retired teacher herself, Epps’ mom also gave her some advice.

“She told me I probably would have to buy classroom decorations with my money, like bulletin boards and posters,” Epps said. “But that is not what happened.”

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Epps was surprised when she first stepped into her Florida classroom and found there were no supplies available: no paper, no staplers, not even dry-erase markers. In the following months, she spent over $6,000 to stock basic supplies and materials to teach science.

Epps’s experience on her first days as a teacher is an extreme but generally familiar version of what almost every American teacher goes through. The reported that 95% of public school teachers reported spending their own money to buy supplies for the classroom in the most recent data available — without getting reimbursed.

Many teachers can in classroom expenses from their taxes, but they often spend way more than that. In a survey conducted by the crowdfunding platform DonorsChoose of 2,500 teachers who used the platform, educators reported .

Like Epps, most teachers spend most of their money on essential materials such as paper, pencils, and markers. Chalkbeat asked educators to share how much they and what they spend it on. More than 120 teachers across the country responded.

They reported spending anywhere from $65 to $6,000. Their purchases included items to make students more comfortable and learning more enjoyable. Many said they expected to spend more on students this year than last.

Below, some of these teachers share in their own words how and why they spend money out of their own pockets on their classrooms.

A comfortable place for students is teacher’s goal

Judy Hall is an English teacher at Barringer High School in Newark, New Jersey

I’ve been teaching for 25 years and am used to spending my own money. Part of my expenses are resources for teaching: I subscribe to some newspapers since I use articles to teach English, and I buy books for my classroom’s library.

I also buy décor items: It is important that the classroom is comfortable and cozy for the students and for myself, since I spend most of my day there. Many of my students are food insecure, so I try to keep snacks and protein bars with me. I also keep menstrual products, a sewing kit, a full body mirror, and first aid supplies.

Last year, I paid around $1,500, and I expect to spend the same amount this year. It is more than I was used to, mainly because the price of food has increased so much.

I like that kids feel like they can drop by for additional help. I am a very strict teacher. In my class, everyone has to follow the rules and do their work. Having this kind of homey experience helps build a stronger connection.

Students with disabilities need appropriate equipment

Ellen Brody-Kirmss is a special education teacher at Clara Barton High School, in Brooklyn, New York

I have been teaching for 19 years and, in the beginning, I spent much more money than I do now. I didn’t have lesson plans, or a curriculum, or even my own classroom. Because of that, I had to buy a rolling cart that I could bring from one place to another.

I am a special education teacher, and both my parents were, too. Back in their day, which is ancient history now, the materials that would help the students they were teaching weren’t available: They had to be inventive. I am part of that tradition.

This year, I am teaching a course to students with intellectual disabilities who are part of the [Academics, Career, and Essential Skills] Program. In high school, there’s nothing in ready-made equipment appropriate for them, and each student has specific needs. I bought calculators, headphones, different writing instruments, and tools to help kids read. I got a lot of pictures and word games for students too, because they struggle with discourse. I expect to spend up to $800 from my own pocket this year.

I’m trying to get the school to buy a particular online curriculum for math. If they don’t and it’s cheap enough, I’ll buy it, but I don’t want to have to do that.

Teacher wants classroom to be ‘best place on Earth’

Mindy Gunderson is a first grade teacher at Hayden Canyon Charter in Hayden, Idaho

This year, I spent about $2,000 to get started. My biggest expense was in supplies for an independent workstation and classroom decorations. When kids finish their work, they can pick an activity from a chart where I list the independent workstations: There are building pieces, sensory boards, STEM toys, math manipulatives, and so on.

I don’t know if everybody agrees with me, but these items are essential to me. I wholeheartedly believe that learning takes place through play. So, in a first-grade classroom, I want to incorporate as much play as possible. Through this, kids also develop a sense of community because they get together to play, build things, and do work at the stations.

I want students to love coming to school. When I incorporate things they enjoy, they want to go to school and learn. Once that happens, I can teach them anything. And if that means I have to invest a little bit of my money, I’m OK with that because I want the relationship and my classroom to be the best place on Earth.

‘I don’t ever want to go back to teaching’

Jamie Epps is a science teacher at Hialeah Senior High School in Hialeah, Florida

On my first day as a teacher, I didn’t bring anything because I heard teachers are given a little starter pack. My mom, who had been a teacher for over 20 years, also told me that I would probably have to buy classroom decorations, like a bulletin board.

That’s not the situation I lived in when I walked into the classroom: there were no pencils, paper, or markers. I had to buy everything, from staplers to printer ink. Over the 2023-2024 school year, I spent over $6,000, including materials for science experiments. I bought a class pet, a rabbit, and a fish tank so that we could study marine science.

This year, the district provided a little kit with a dry-erase marker, some hall passes, and a package of post-its. I am finishing nursing school, and I don’t ever want to go back to teaching after this experience.

Teacher salary raises headed back into classroom costs

Polly Franklin is a Spanish teacher at Lowell Senior High School in Lowell, Indiana

As a Spanish teacher, most of what I spend out of my own money goes to subscriptions to technology that give my students the best chance of learning and save me an abundance of time. These subscriptions can add up — I spent about $300 last year and am thinking I’ll spend closer to $500 this school year.

There’s a lot on the Internet for Spanish educators, but I don’t have time to sift through all the materials in the world to find ones appropriate to my class. The ones I pay for on my own include , a website [specifically] for Spanish teachers, that gives me games and authentic songs and lyrics to bring into my classroom.

Like all teachers, my time outside of school is stretched thin during the school year. I am a full-time caretaker of a family member and I’m getting a master’s degree. Even though I spend my own money reluctantly, I know it’s worth it for the kids’ enjoyment of lessons and also for my own sanity. It is sad to me that, for a lot of us, any small salary raise we get seems to just go right back into the classroom.

Classroom supplies take priority over helping student clubs

Ceretta Morris is a Language Arts and social studies teacher at John D. Shoop Academy in Chicago

This year has been particularly challenging. In the past, I taught only one grade level; now, I teach three. This has led to me needing a wider variety of materials and resources. I teach four classes of 25 kids daily, so I buy a lot of stuff. I ordered a box of 500 pre-sharpened pencils, heavy-duty pencil sharpeners, folders, and boxes of copy paper.

I’m the queen of taking advantage of all available donations: Donor Choose, AdoptAClassroom, GoFundMe 
 I do all of those, but I still spent about $600 out of my pocket. I also tried to put some of the material in a supply list, but getting middle school parents to shop for school supplies is hard.

If I didn’t have to spend money on essential supplies, I would love to support the funding for our school clubs. I co-sponsor our school’s Junior , which [gathers] high achieving students to perform services to the community, and I see how much funding they still need.

Wellington Soares is Chalkbeat’s national education reporting intern based in New York City. Contact Wellington at wsoares@chalkbeat.org.

Caroline Bauman is Chalkbeat’s deputy managing editor for engagement.

This story was originally published on Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

According to a survey of more than 3,000 teachers conducted by AdoptAClassroom.org, a nonprofit crowdfunding platform, teachers received a median classroom school supply budget of $200 last school year – an amount that 93% of the respondents said was not enough to cover their in-class needs.

Many teachers choose to subsidize the remainder of the costs, but it comes at a steep price. Out-of-pocket spending among teachers has increased by 44% since 2015, the survey found, with teachers reporting that they spent an average of $860 of their own money on supplies and other expenses during the 2022-2023 school year.

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“Teachers spend their classroom supply budget fast,” Melissa Hruza, Vice President, Marketing & Development at AdoptAClassroom.org, told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “Even though they are willing to provide basic items like food and supplies for their students, their ability to pay for it is decreasing.”

One big reason: teacher pay has failed to keep up with the sky high rate of inflation in recent years. Adjusted for inflation, teachers are making $3,644 less than they did a decade ago, according to the National Education Association.

Communities and parents appear to be recognizing the challenges teachers face. AdoptAClassroom.org said its site has received more donations to teachers for the 2024-2025 back-to-school season than last year.

“Comparing July and August 2024 to the same period in 2023, the number of contributions to educators on AdoptAClassroom.org is currently up 13% from 2023 to 2024 so far this year,” Hruza said. “There’s also been a 9% increase in the number of both new fundraisers and total number of teachers with active campaigns.”

GoFundMe has seen a similar bump. So far this year, more than $12 million has been raised for K-12 education on the crowdfunding platform. In 2023, total funds raised for educators reached over $24 million — a 7% increase from the previous year.

“[P]eople don’t always see the hidden costs that end up on teachers’ hands, like providing additional resources for students who can’t afford small items like pencils,” Shawn An, a first-year earth and environmental science teacher at Julius L. Chambers High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

To ensure he and his students were fully prepared for this school year, An launched a GoFundMe campaign called A Classroom for Future Scientists, with a goal to raise $1,000. He ended up receiving $1,045 in donations.

“What this funding created is the opportunity for me to bring the basic necessities into the classroom I need to succeed, like organizers and writing utensils to grade with,” An said. “It’s helped me create a space where I can be efficient and to find resources for students to engage in the work we’re asking them to do.”

Lightening the load

To help teachers afford the supplies they need, GoFundMe launched its own fundraising initiative called the Education Opportunity Fund. Since the fund’s launch in 2020, GoFundMe has raised more than $240,000 and has distributed more than 550 grants to teachers in order to help them afford classroom supplies and other educational resources, Leigh Lehman, GoFundMe director of communications, told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

“The grants were an additional step to offer help to educators and lighten their load a bit, and there are still grants available for teachers who are in need,” Lehman said.

Grants of can be put toward common classroom items like school supplies, books and class decorations. Funds can also be used for other educational resources or items like field trips, playground equipment, updated technology and extracurricular activities.

Similar to GoFundMe’s grant initiative, AdoptAClassroom.org provides funding through their Spotlight Fund Grants program. This program targets classroom initiatives that address things like social-emotional wellness, Indigenous language, arts, STEM education and racial equity. Eligible teachers can apply for grants of $750 or more on AdoptAClassroom.org.

“People all around the country want to find ways to help more teachers,” GoFundMe’s Lehman said. “They understand there is a gap in funding and that teachers are incredibly stressed.”

Keeping kids engaged

Hana Syed Khan, a fourth grade teacher in New Jersey’s South River Public Schools district, started her own GoFundMe campaign, A Classroom Built on Kindness, in August to support her efforts to make her classroom “as useful, accessible and hands-on as possible.”

Entering her fifth year of teaching at a new school in a new district, Syed Khan knew she had to be more creative with the amount of classroom space she has, materials needed and the resources available.

Her campaign raised $1,920 in funds, which she used to purchase a spin-the-wheel device, a carpet for reading time, books for the classroom library and the classroom staple Better Than Paper.

“The [kids] want to touch everything, and they should be able to. It’s their room,” Syed Khan told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

Through sharing via family group chats, her husband’s LinkedIn account, word-of-mouth and other social media platforms, like and , Syed Khan said she “feels fortunate to have set up the fundraiser and leverage community support for her classroom.”

She plans to keep her fundraiser open to donations so she can continue to afford classroom activities and incentives with hopes to keep students engaged through the year.

“Students in this district suffer from chronic absenteeism, which may stem from lack of transportation, parents’ schedule or a lack of motivation for themselves,” Syed Khan said. “Classroom incentives, like parties at the end of the month, are a really big part of what I want to use the funds for next.”

Drawing from his own school experience, An said he understands that many of his students face challenges outside of the classroom. Bringing smaller tools and supplies like writing utensils and paper to class is not the first thing on their mind.

“That can be a real barrier for students to access what teachers are asking them to do,” An said. “Using the donations to directly address those barriers helps students stay engaged to do their best in the classroom.”

He used a portion of the donations he has raised to purchase a rolling cart that allows for easy access to classroom supplies.

An and Syed Khan hope their efforts inspire other teachers to overcome the fear of asking for help. For Syed Khan, it was difficult to find the right words for the campaign and the video she included to go along with it. She wanted to ensure her classroom needs were as clear as possible to potential donors.

“Trying to figure out what to say to grab people’s attention was the most challenging part,” Syed Khan said.

“It definitely wasn’t easy,” she said. “But when people see someone speaking and explaining what the funds will be used for, it can attract many people because they see a real human.”

An experienced similar doubts about asking for help. He credits his family for providing feedback on his campaign narrative and helping him to frame his message.

“My family and I went through a co-writing process to get the point across that this was me, just as a person, asking a personal favor of people who were available,” An said.

GoFundMe currently hosts webinars for educators and education-related organizations to help them learn how to effectively fundraise. They’ve also updated their with tips for teachers to share their campaign and keep communities engaged.

“Seeing more teachers turn to external sources of funding to help support their students’ needs is definitely eye-opening,” An said. “It highlights the fact that not as much care is funneled into education as I think it should be.”

That is especially true this year. A 2023 back-to-school from Deloitte reports that after 18 months of inflation, parents of K-12 students aren’t planning to spend as much on back-to-school supplies as they did last year, due to inflation and a need to replenish their savings accounts after the pandemic. A from World Remit shows that the cost of school supplies in the United States has increased by over 25% compared with 2022. 

Though inflation is the it has been since March 2021, high prices are still stressing shoppers and increasing their reliance on local and national back-to-school drives. The nonprofit organizations that sponsor those drives, in turn, are struggling to meet the growing demand.

’s back-to-school supplies initiative, called Operation Backpack, has been an integral part of their charity for more than 20 years. around the country provide homeless students with l backpacks filled with essential materials like paper, pencils, notebooks, hand sanitizer and water bottles. They prioritize giving top-of-the-line products directly to children and families, rather than schools or teachers, so students won’t have to show up empty-handed on the first day, making them a possible target of bullying or harassment.

Jatrice Gaiter, vice president of external affairs, said the need is increasing.

“There is a paradox here in that the people that need our services, that number is growing substantially,” Gaiter said. “At the same time, the people and the money that we as nonprofits have to provide them are shrinking, because of inflation. It’s just that everything is so much more expensive this year. And making sure that we have enough for people with multiple children, that’s a big issue. These programs often act like everybody has one child. There are people that have three and five and six kids, and we want to make sure that every single child in a family has a backpack.”

The stress is being felt at the local level as well. a nonprofit organization that offers athletic and academic afterschool programs, has been hosting back-to-school supply drives for low-income families for years. This month, the organization had its biggest turnout yet, giving out over 500 backpacks filled with supplies like paper, crayons, notebooks and pencil holders. The event also offered free food, haircuts, health vendors educating community members on health crises in the area and two $250 scholarships donated by local restaurants. 

“The need always increases, because although the state of Florida has a tax-free weekend, which this year had been extended to a month long, on the flip side of that, the cost of living is rising, employers aren’t giving raises,” Shaun Hartsfield, founder and president of HYPE Pensacola said.

Hartsfield said the record-breaking event couldn’t have succeeded without help from other local organizations.

“People’s wages at their job isn’t going up, but the cost of living is going up, so although there’s tax-free, parents still can’t afford them,” he said. “Everybody has to have electricity, so that’s always going to be their priority. With just the cost of living being high, there’s always going to be an increase every year in people needing the assistance that we provide.”

Back-to-school shopping also drains many teachers’ wallets as they use their own money to buy classroom supplies. On average, public school teachers spend nearly $500 without being reimbursed, according to from the National Center for Education Statistics. 

is a nonprofit organization that supports teachers and students in Title I schools where at least half the students are enrolled in the National School Lunch Program. In 2022, the foundation gave more than in free school supplies and classroom resources. But like Gaiter, Michaela Becker, the foundation’s senior director of national network, said inflation is making it harder to help those in need. The organization relies heavily on grants and funding, so when families and foundations have less to donate, the foundation has less to give.

“Costs have gone up for everyone,” Becker said, including for suppliers that contribute to the foundation. Bic, one of its top donors, has seen a rise in the cost to manufacture its products, leaving them with fewer pens to give away.

One of the organization’s biggest initiatives is the Teacher Resource Center in Roseville, Minnesota, where educators can fill up carts with classroom supplies for free. There is also a Supply a Student program, where $25 donations equate to one backpack full of necessities, and a Supply a Teacher program, where teachers receive two boxes of supplies — enough to last a class of 24 students for a semester.

Becker said organizations like theirs are crucial in times of inflation, but the need never stops.

Then Smith found out she was pregnant. To make some money she started watching two other children along with her daughter, but the further she got into her pregnancy the harder it was, and she eventually had to stop. The foregone income meant that she couldn’t afford to buy the things she needed for a new baby. She and her husband are separated and Smith is solely responsible for financially supporting both kids.

“At that point I really didn’t have anything,” Smith said. She hadn’t planned to have another child, so she had given everything of her older daughter’s away except a crib. She still needed not just a car seat, but smaller things like an outfit to bring her home in from the hospital. She simply couldn’t afford to buy diapers and wipes. “It was emotional for me because I was realizing, ‘I’m about to have a baby in a month or so
 and I don’t have anything to even bring her home in,’ ” she said. “It was very scary because I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

Then Smith found what she calls a “blessing”: the diaper bank in Buffalo, New York. The executive director started sending supplies to Smith’s home: diapers, wipes, bottles, and even an outfit. “It was literally the very first thing, the only thing I had for my unborn child at the time,” she said. Seeing the packages arrive brought her to tears.

“It was embarrassing,” she said. “It’s a very humbling experience to have to ask somebody to help you provide for your family in that way.” But finding a resource that could help her get the necessities she needed to care for her new baby at least offered her relief. “I just looked at it like, ‘I can’t believe that somebody I don’t even know is helping me with something that’s so important to me,’” she said.

Smith is just one of millions of parents who struggle to afford diapers for their children. In a , the National Diaper Bank Network has found something alarming: diaper need has increased significantly since the last time it surveyed families in 2017. Today nearly half, or 47 percent, of families report not always having enough diapers to change their children as often as they would like, finding it difficult to afford buying diapers for their children, and/or running out of diapers because they couldn’t afford enough. That’s much higher than the who reported diaper need in 2017. With such high levels, perhaps it’s not surprising that the newest survey found diaper need among all income levels. It was very high for low-income households, two-thirds of whom had diaper need, but over a third of middle-income families and even 6 percent of high-income ones also dealt with it.

The survey of 1,000 families with a child under the age of four currently wearing diapers, which was conducted by YouGov, is comparable to the 2017 version, said Kelley Massengale, director of research and evaluation at the Diaper Bank of North Carolina. Both surveyed nationally representative groups of families — this survey based its demographics on the 2019 American Community Survey — using the same screening questions to identify those with diaper need. There was one change in the most recent version: clarifying that running out of diapers because a parent forgot to pack enough on an outing doesn’t qualify as diaper need; in this survey, language was added to make it clear it was about being able to afford enough.

When the pandemic hit and governments shut down businesses and enacted stay at home orders, families lost jobs and income, and diaper need rose sharply. “Diaper banks across the country responded to an unprecedented request for diapers,” Massengale said. “Many families experienced diaper need for the first time.” Even after the federal government launched a number of programs aimed at helping households remain financially whole, many families still struggled to buy basic needs. The new survey, conducted in April and May of this year, shows that those struggles continue. “It’s persistent,” Massengale said. Not to mention that most of the pandemic-era programs, from rental assistance and eviction moratoria to extra food stamp benefits to an increased Child Tax Credit, have all ended.

Increasing inflation, meanwhile, has been squeezing family budgets—the cost of diapers has risen along with food, rent, and other goods. All of this has meant that the crush of demand sparked by the start of the pandemic hasn’t eased. At the Diaper Bank of North Carolina, “it hasn’t stopped. It just hasn’t slowed down at all,” Massengale said. “We get calls daily asking where they can go for diapers.”

The survey also sheds light on what it means for families to experience diaper need. Among those who reported it, nearly half said they reduced their spending on other needs to afford them, the most common of which was entertainment outside of the home. That can mean a family forgoing a museum outing or the chance to see a movie in the theater. Perhaps more dire, however, was that over a third cut back on food, while one in five reduced spending on utilities. Over a quarter skipped meals so they could buy more diapers. “Parents are doing everything they can for their children,” said Joanne Goldblum, chief executive officer of the National Diaper Bank Network. “We have a system that is so barbaric that we expect parents not to eat in order to provide for the basic needs of their children.”

Diaper need also has a big impact on a family’s ability to work. Most child care centers require families to send their children with a set supply of diapers. Among those with diaper need, a quarter of parents and caregivers said they had to miss school or work because they didn’t have enough to send a child to child care. They had missed about five days, on average, in the month prior to the survey.

Diaper need also has mental health impacts. Seventy percent of those who reported diaper need said they were stressed or anxious about caregiving responsibilities, while over half felt judged as a bad parent or caregiver.

Smith is now back to work: she works part-time for Every Bottom Covered. But she’s still struggling to afford diapers and the other necessities her daughters need. “There are times when she may run out before I can afford to get her some more,” Smith said of her baby. She gets diapers through the diaper bank, but it’s a set amount every 30 days. She is sometimes forced to choose between the basics: paying rent, buying enough food, getting feminine products for herself, or buying diapers and wipes for her youngest. Sometimes she’s foregone feminine products and used some tissue instead so she could afford diapers. Sometimes she’s run out completely and had to use some extra blankets or sheets.

“It’s embarrassing and it makes you feel bad,” Smith said. “Mommy guilt is a real thing, to not be able to do essential things for your kids.”

Diaper need is not really a disease itself; it’s a symptom of how many American families live in such financial precarity that they can’t afford the most basic of necessities. “It is not logical to think that a family would only struggle with diaper need,” Goldblum said. The survey illustrates that “families are making untenable choices, and diapers are one of those things.”

The country made a different choice in 2021 when it expanded the Child Tax Credit, offering it to all low-income families, even those earning little to no income, sending it out monthly, and increasing the amount to $300 a month for children under age six and $250 for older ones. Child poverty by the end of the year, which meant families had more resources to afford all of their needs, including diapers. “The problem with poverty is not having the money you need,” Goldblum pointed out. These kind of payments lifted the burden of diaper need from far more families.

There are other big policy solutions Goldblum says would address the problem, such as universal, affordable child care and preschool — both of which would ease families’ budgets and therefore make more room to afford diapers — or a minimum wage that increases automatically with inflation so families’ pay can keep up with the cost of their needs.

One thing that won’t necessarily solve the problem: cloth diapers. They require families to do extra laundry — families who are already struggling to afford basics like laundry detergent or laundromat money. Plus, many child care providers won’t even accept cloth diapers given that soiled ones have to be stored for a parent to take back home. It’s therefore “not necessarily a solution that parents can access all the time,” Massengale said.

Smaller but meaningful solutions to diaper need could include adding federal funding to ensure every child care center that accepts subsidies is also given money to provide families with diapers. “That is something that could be done easily,” Goldblum said. “It’s a single budget line item.” The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides qualifying low-income families with cash, could add a diaper credit, similar to in 2017. Federal buildings, homeless shelters and federally qualified health centers could have diapers to give away for free.

Some action has already been taken. In 2022, the federal Administration for Children and Families announced it would for the first time in grants to get more diapers to families struggling to afford them. have exempted diapers from sales tax, with more currently considering doing the same.

But it’s not clear when larger-scale relief will come. The expanded Child Tax Credit expired at the end of 2021, as one potent example, and lawmakers haven’t brought it back.

“There’s still not a unified response, on a policy level, to address child poverty in the United States,” Goldblum said.

“I feel like the most expensive thing is literally clothing, new backpacks and lunchboxes,” Aguião said of her search for supplies this month.

AguiĂŁo is not alone in feeling the pinch.  

As prices have surged on everything from technology to clothing to backpacks, parents and teachers nationwide are scrambling to afford classroom necessities for kids.

A found 57% of back-to-school shoppers are concerned about inflation anticipating spending surges to reach a new high of $661 per student – an increase of $53, or 8%, from the 2021-22 school year.

The Deloitte survey also found K-12 spending is expected to focus on clothing and accessories compared to last year’s pandemic-fueled technology spree.

According to the , clothing prices are expected to grow 2.9% for girls’ apparel and 3.4% for boys’ apparel compared to 2019. In addition, technology-related items will grow 2.2% and educational books and supplies will grow 4.5%.

But experts say parents are willing to spend the extra funds for their children.

“Even as economic and inflationary pressures sit top of mind, parents seem resilient and determined to ensure their children get the school supplies needed to succeed this coming year,” said Nick Handrinos, Deloitte vice chair and U.S. retail and consumer products leader. 

To ease costs, many parents plan to reuse school supplies, skip travel plans or dip into savings, according to .

“Generally speaking, American shoppers are still spending a lot on back-to-school supplies — certainly more than before the pandemic,” NPR found. “But financial anxiety is now a common part of the experience.” 

This rings true for Sabrina Ortiz-Santos, an incoming 1st grade Spanish and math teacher at Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, D.C., who, like many teachers across the country, has often drawn from her own salary to purchase classroom essentials.

The bulk of Ortiz-Santos’s back-to-school spending has been cleaning supplies and other COVID-19- related items.

“The school I was previously at was very helpful in the beginning, but as the weeks went on I found myself having to repurchase a lot of the things that were running out,” Ortiz-Santos said. “To get the classroom ready and prepared for the first day, I’ve definitely spent more than $500.”

However, this experience does not always resonate with families in her community.

Ortiz-Santos also works as a teacher at D.C.’s Theodore Roosevelt High School and often supports newcomer students.

“It gets progressively harder each year for these families to provide the resources their kids need,” she said. “But schools like [Theodore Roosevelt High School] are mindful of the economic circumstances their students face and go to great lengths to provide them with things like a hotspot and a tablet.”

AguiĂŁo said parents in her community are not always eager to accept help from their school.

“It’s kind of embarrassing,” AguiĂŁo said. “So I always tell my son’s friends that if they can’t get supplies let me know and I’ll get supplies for them too.”

Although the Deloitte survey found technology-related purchases have reached a saturation point, , a project-based website for teachers, technology-related items continue to be a high priority request, said organization spokesman Juan Brizuela. 

According to Brizuela, DonorsChoose fully funded 342,108 projects in the 2021-22 school year — a significant hike compared to the 261,282 projects in the 2020-21 school year and the 262,959 projects in the 2019-20 school year.

“Since the pandemic hit, we saw quite a big jump in instructional technology,” Brizuela said, adding that included requests for items such as digital software for the classroom, and headphones for students while they’re at home doing school work and hoping to avoid distractions.

But now, with chicken and beef prices up, a worldwide shortage of packaging materials and a dearth of long-haul truckers, she’s not as sure what she’ll be serving the district’s 18,000 students this fall. And she won’t be surprised if distributors start adding transportation surcharges “to stop the bleeding on their end” — something she hasn’t seen since the Great Recession.

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“It’s a domino effect,” she said. “We’re at the point now where we don’t even know what’s going to come in the back door.”

Food services are just one aspect of school operations affected by inflation, which is experiencing a 13-year high. Wages are climbing because districts can’t find enough employees to drive buses or provide students additional academic support. Price hikes on materials are causing some districts to hit pause on construction projects and districts are for teachers to help students catch up.

At a time when the American Rescue Plan is flooding school districts with more federal money than they’ve ever had, educators are slowly awakening to the reality that those funds might not go as far as expected and that inflation may have a lasting impact on their regular budgets as well .

“School districts are like little cities. You’ve got food service. You’ve got transportation. You’ve got maintenance. Inflation across the sectors will impact all those areas,” said Charles Carpenter, chief financial officer for the Denver Public Schools.

The economic indicators are clear. This summer, the Consumer Price Index — which measures changes in what people typically pay for goods and services — saw its largest one-month and 12-month increases since 2008, according to the government’s .

Experts attribute in inflation in part to the rollback of pandemic restrictions: Consumers are traveling, eating out and shopping more, which is driving up prices. But there’s not enough supply to meet the demand.

The debate is over how much to worry about it. Some that President Joe Biden’s policies — the partisan relief bill that passed in March and his big-ticket infrastructure packages — will hurt the economy, while others argue this period of inflation and won’t spiral out of control.

Either way, Carpenter is closely monitoring costs of raw materials like lumber and copper as the district moves forward with building new schools and adding air-conditioning to 24 sites over the next three years.

Contractors “are bidding on our projects knowing that they’ll see price increases,” he said. “Do you try and push forward now and lock in a price or wait and it could be worse?”

Some districts are discussing whether to to lower prices and others have decided to pause projects because contractors can’t provide solid cost estimates. The St. Clair R-III School District, southwest of St. Louis, decided in June to delay construction on a performing arts center and a bus facility until costs stabilize. “It has become much more difficult to obtain competitive, cost-effective bids for construction projects,” Superintendent Kyle Kruse said in his report to the board.

‘Can’t find the people’

While districts might be able to defer construction or renovation, they can’t put off addressing students’ academic needs — especially given the extreme learning loss that often accompanied more than a year of remote learning.

“We’ve got this short-term demand for services to mitigate instructional loss and a shortage of labor willing to put in that time,” said Jonathan Travers, who leads consulting services for Education Resource Strategies, a nonprofit that helps districts leverage resources to improve student learning.

That’s why in addition to price hikes on materials, districts are seeing higher labor costs. Some have offered bonuses and even to attract summer school teachers. The danger for districts, he said, is that unions might expect to maintain those higher wages when they return to the bargaining table to negotiate future contracts.

In Plymouth-Canton, Hennessey still has 20 positions to fill before fall. She said entry-level school nutrition employees earn about $11 per hour, but that doesn’t come close to the $15 they can earn at McDonald’s. And districts nationally are struggling to find even with higher pay.

“It’s great to have all this money,” said Uri Monson, chief financial officer with the Philadelphia schools. “But if you can’t find the people to do the work — even if you’re going to pay them — that’s a problem.”

Districts aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch. from the accounting firm KPMGshowed parents estimate they’ll spend an average of $20 more on school supplies this fall. Parents of young children, many of whom delayed enrollment last year, anticipate spending $156 per child — a 32 percent increase over last school year.

What’s eating up much of their back-to-school spending? — a necessity some may have skipped last fall when many districts opened remotely.

One relief for families is that the increased costs come at the same time the majority of households with school-age children are receiving monthly of $250 to $300, approved as part of the relief bill.

‘Calm the markets’

Some districts plan budgets to allow them to ride out periods like this. The Philadelphia district signs fixed contracts for expenses such as fuel, food services — and, of course, labor.

“We occasionally get criticized when we do long-term guaranteed pricing contracts,” Monson said. “No one is going to complain right now. This is exactly why we do it.”

But he acknowledged that the soaring prices are hitting contractors hard as well as those waiting for supplies. “The cost of wood and basic materials has been out of control,” Monson said. And with shipping delays, he’s urging departments to allow longer lead times for deliveries. “It’s really hard to order something on Friday and expect it to be there on Monday.”

That’s because the most Americans experienced at the beginning of the pandemic haven’t really gone away.

“There are shipments from Asia that have been stuck at the Los Angeles port since October” — mostly because of labor shortages, said Charlie Andrews, a senior cost manager with Rider Levett Bucknall, which advises school districts on construction costs and provides project management services.

When contractors face unforeseen costs, such as tariffs, they often pass those on to school systems.

Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund — which advocates for modernizing school facilities — said cost fluctuations help make the case for Biden’s $100 school construction plan, a combination of direct grants and bonds. The proposal didn’t make it in the with Republicans, but is expected to re-emerge in the details of a Democrats have proposed.

“Districts need long money,” Filardo said. “It will calm the markets somewhat and give them more leverage as they plan and implement projects.”