Yea, take a gander at the other post. I believe this is a "you're reading to argue not read to conversate" problem.
Again, I'm fully aware of how much a school district uses in copy paper. In fact I'd be willing to bet that it's actually more than I can think. My issue is, that is 100% a blatant object that should not be provided by students as it's not an actual school supply the students use directly. That is 100% an item that should be school provided.
Not to wave around any type of privilege here or anything, but this district is Chromebooks down to 2nd grade. My area and surrounding areas alone is a 300k-500k so it's upper mid class which is why I pay so much in property taxes. The 3rd graders and (last year) 5th grader never brought home any worksheets or printed copies. Everything from worksheets, to school work, to even the school handbook was pushed via the Chromebook. The parents have a site to visit via a browser extension to see grades, homework, and work helper items. Not even the first graders brought home much paper and usually it was on spiral paper due to it being coloring type stuff. So to clarify, do they use it? Absolutely. Should it be a student provided avenue? No. Not even my ****ty 3a poor af school district made us provide items like a ream of copy paper and that was 100% pre-electronics.
Edit: I'm going to take this time to reiterate a bit here for clarification since for some reason you took to a defensive stride due to your wife being a retired teacher. I'm sure my rant on the subject didn't help that, but at the same time it appears we're all on the same page and oddly enough Kman was the only one to see that we're both mutually agreeing.
1: This is my 3rd year in this district buying supplies for kids. It's not my first rodeo, but this is the first year I've seen nonsensical items like dry erase markers and reams of copy paper on the supply lists hence my outburst on the subject.
2: We're all in agreement that the taxpayer money is not properly being utilized to fund the schools, yet instead used to make more money. Namely in American schools this funding almost always goes to the sports program due to kickbacks they get, as well as board member pockets.
3: We're all in agreement that the teachers use their own hard earned money to pay for supplies that otherwise should be provided by parents or the facility. We're also all in agreement that I can see that this is bull****. Unfortunately, it's been a thing for far too long and probably won't change.
4: I should clarify that this district I'm in is huge, but the schools are basically for "sub districts" because basically each small community has its own school system. In other words, the culprit in question here is strictly the elementary school as the list for the middle school doesn't include things like dry erase markers or reams of paper which are clearly not for the students. This is the main reason for my own outburst on the subject as the tax amount each year is increasing due to increasing property value yet this is obviously not trickling down to the school system. Rather it is, just not in the correct areas.
5: More on the elementary school, the parents in the community are personally funding a teacher lounge remodel and redecoration due to the school absolutely flat out refusing to do it for years (since before I moved into the area). This plus the added list items for this year (and not previous years) goes to show me there is a serious problem going on where 3 of my kids are going to school and ultimately is making me question my decision on staying in the area. I chose this area due to how good the school apparently was, but that obviously was at face value. Are they getting a relatively decent education? From what I can see looking at the material and how well the teachers are handling the kids I'd say yes, but at what cost.
Hopefully that clears the air a little bit. We had the exact same conversation yesterday at work and another lady even added her experience with private schools in the area. From what she's saying, that situation is even more grim.