School: When Did It Get So Expensive?

This year my son starts kindergarten and begins an academic career that will last at least 13 years, and then hopefully an additional four. I have vague memories of my kindergarten registration, but I don’t remember going through as many bureaucratic hoops as today.

The cost of getting a child ready for school is skyrocketing and the government just keeps piling things on. There is the initial cost of registration, a school physical and dental and eye exams. Let’s not forget the 70 pounds of school supplies that have to be picked up, too.

When did school get so complicated? Maybe I am seeing through the innocent eyes of naivety and things have always been this way. It makes me wonder how many parents have difficulty getting ready for school because of time and financial impairments.

I set up my son’s school physical and the only date available was three weeks down the line. Here I was thinking that I could just call them up and be in the next day. Color me shocked. It was the same for the other tests; those tests aren’t exactly cheap either.

The dental I understand, because it’s important to have strong teeth, but an eye exam? What happened to the free yearly screenings that took place right at the school? We’d all shuffle in, one class at a time, and look into the dooeybopper vision checking machine and that was it. The school would notify our parents if we needed to see an optometrist. Easy peasy. It was one of those screenings that caught my visual impairment in junior high. After that, I went to an eye doctor and joined the millions of other folks sporting sweet vision correction devices. I had never seen an eye doctor before then, because I never needed to.

You know, it’s not easy being a parent. We work hard to provide the things our children need and make sacrifices for them everyday. It would be nice if those in the government and academia would recognize this and stop putting more and more of the expense on the parent.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. I have talked with many parents who are stressed out because of the financing needed for school every year. It’s hard when you have one child, but what happens if you have two or three and those expenses double and triple? Sadly, its the way the world works, and we just have to grin and bear it.