CBS also mentions the bulk of that will be spent on clothing, something the school isn't going to provide unless it's a situation where there's a school uniform. Maybe things have changed since I was in school, but all we ever had to buy was pencils, a red pen for checking other students' work, colored map pencils, some binders and paper. In elementary school, maybe some plastic scissors and construction paper. Also a backpack, but that wasn't an every-year purchase. When we *were* called upon to use semi-expensive items (graphic calculators) they were provided by the school.

I don't have specific memories of this, but I strongly suspect my teachers had extras on hand for kids whose parents didn't send them to school w/ the requested list of supplies.

I'm not against the idea per se; I just don't think it ranks very highly among the multitude of other educational problems we've yet to address.