As costs rise, New Jersey teachers and families struggle to afford school supplies

School hadn’t even begun for Nick Ferroni, a teacher at Union High School in Union Township, New Jersey, but by the time August was coming to a close, he had already spent hundreds of dollars on school supplies for his students.

Ferroni, a history and humanities teacher who’s going into his 23rd year at Union High School, is used to spending his own money to purchase classroom supplies. In recent years, he has shelled out about $1,500 annually on everything from books to a food drawer he always keeps stocked for any student who may be struggling with hunger. 

This year, however, Ferroni is expecting to spend more than usual. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why that is, said Ferroni, who helped found his school’s Gay-Straight Alliance and its Feminist Club. He has appeared on national television; was included in photographer John Russo’s book “100 Making a Difference” for his commitment to teaching inclusive history, including about civil rights; and was named an “Upstander of the Year” by the Human Rights Campaign for his support for LGBTQ+ youth.

The educator explained he’s moving away from a tech-heavy classroom out of concern for his students’ mental health and academic performance. That, he says, is contributing to the increased costs, because he needs to purchase numerous new items like notebooks for them to write in instead of typing on laptops. Ferroni noted the supplies that he’s buying are often more expensive than in recent years, something that experts attribute in part to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported goods. Plus, as schools face federal budget cuts, the little money that had been allocated for teachers’ supplies is dwindling, if it’s there at all, Ferroni said. 

All of this is coming as educators, union leaders and Democratic lawmakers say public school teachers are underpaid and increased wages are needed in a profession that’s losing educators because they’re burnt out.

“There’s never been a time I’ve been an educator where schools have been fully funded and teachers have been paid adequate wages,” Ferroni told the New Jersey Independent on Aug. 18. “It sucks our teachers have to buy all the stuff we use.”

The rising cost of school supplies

Nationwide, teachers have long had to spend their own money on classroom supplies, but those costs are rising and are expected to further increase as Trump’s tariffs on imported goods go into effect.

Typical supplies needed to start the year will cost an average of 7.3% more as school begins this year, according to an August report from the Groundwork Collaborative and the Century Foundation, both progressive think tanks. Prices for some goods are rising at a much higher rate than that, with the cost of index cards jumping by more than 40% and the price of binders and folders increasing by 13%, according to the same analysis.

On average, teachers nationwide spent an average of $895 out of pocket on school supplies during the 2024-25 school year, according to a survey of teachers across the country by AdoptAClassroom.org, a Minnesota-based nonprofit that connects teachers with donors who provide funding for classroom supplies. In New Jersey, that average grows to $963.

The $895 that educators spent last school year has increased 49% since 2015, according to the same survey. A little more than eight in 10 teachers, 82%, said inflation and rising costs of school supplies were a concern for them. These out-of-pocket expenses also come at a time when an increasing number of educators report working second jobs to make ends meet; according to the AdoptAClassroom.org survey, 20% of teachers work a second job.

When asked what they purchase, 82% of the teachers surveyed reported buying essential supplies like paper, pencils and markers. Meanwhile, 66% said they purchased food for students, and 64% said books. More than half of all classroom supplies were purchased by the teacher last year, according to the survey.

“I mean, 99.9% of teachers have snack drawers for students because we care enough about our kids where we don’t want them to sit through school hungry or not have access to food or just sit there thinking about lunch,” Ferroni said. “I think last year, I probably spent 400 bucks on just protein bars, snacks and things like that, just to have for my students that needed them.” 

‘We should be ashamed’

To make ends meet, Ferroni said, educators, including he himself, are turning to crowdfunding platforms sponsored by organizations like AdoptAClassroom.org.

“I love AdoptAClassroom, and I think it’s so essential, but the fact an organization like that exists, we should be ashamed,” Ferroni said. “It’s like, the fact we have organizations where we feed hungry kids, the fact there are kids that are hungry, should be the bigger issue. And it’s just become so normalized that these organizations exist and are acceptable.”

It’s exhausting and demoralizing, Ferroni said, for teachers to pour so much of themselves, and their money, into a job they love while feeling under attack by lawmakers. The Trump administration is working to dismantle the federal Department of Education and has been given the green light to do so by the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. The administration has also called to slash funding for public K-12 schools and over the summer withheld billions of dollars, including about $140 million for New Jersey schools. That funding is now unfrozen following an agreement between the New Jersey attorney general’s office and the administration. Additionally, Trump’s fellow Republican elected officials have continued to attack public education amid a nationwide teacher shortage.

“I feel like we become the scapegoat, and we just became an easy target for people to push political agendas and people to not take accountability,” Ferroni said. “When people are like, close down the Department of Education — to them, it’s like, Yeah, why not? These teachers, they’re lazy; they’re indoctrinating kids. It’s like, they have no clue. They have no clue what the Department of Ed does. They have no clue what happens in a school district and what happens in a school.”

“I want to be optimistic, but I just feel like the people who are tearing down and defunding education are doing it in a way where it would take decades, decades to rebuild, which means the kids that are going through the public school system now mostly will falter, will be struggling in years, and aren’t going to come out of this with their best opportunity or their best selves,” Ferroni continued.

Families burdened by higher prices

It’s not just educators who are facing the increasing cost of supplies; families are as well.

Theresa Leamy, the chief strategy and transformation officer of the United Way of Northern New Jersey, said her organization has seen a 35% increase over last year in the number of people who have signed up to receive free school supplies from her nonprofit’s Tools for School program. The nonprofit has identified about 10,000 families who need assistance with school supplies this year.

“I think people are really struggling, and they’re making really tough choices, and when you have to choose between utility assistance or a pencil case and a backpack, unfortunately sometimes it’s the children that have to go without so that they can have the bare basics like electricity,” Leamy told the New Jersey Independent.

Leamy noted that she herself saw a spike in school supply costs when she went shopping for her child’s back-to-school list this year. 

“I have a 10-year-old myself, and I know what those lists look like that come from the schools,” Leamy said. “It’s anywhere from notebooks to pencils to pencil cases to calculators to scissors, crayons, binders, etc. And just anecdotally I can tell you I felt like the shopping, it was increased this year for sure. And it doesn’t mean that lists increase, just the price and the cost.”

These school supply cost increases come at a time when the number of families struggling to make ends meet is likely rising in New Jersey, said Stephanie Hoopes, the national director of United for ALICE at the United Way of Northern New Jersey.

The United Way, a national nonprofit, uses the term ALICE — which stands for asset-limited, income-constrained, employed — to refer to people who are earning above the federal poverty level but don’t earn enough to survive in the current economy. About 39% of New Jersey households were finding it difficult to make ends meet in 2023, according to the most recent data from the United Way of Northern New Jersey, and Hoopes believes that percentage is increasing.

“I think we are seeing a slowing of economic activity, which impacts especially ALICE working in hourly paid jobs,” Hoopes said. “When businesses slow down, workers work less, and that is a big problem for those who are not on a salary. So I think those folks are feeling the first impact. I think some costs are increasing, maybe not because of tariffs but because of supply interruptions that happen when businesses pause. So between those things, the economy is starting to get harder for ALICE families.”