I Manage a School Budget. Here's Why Your Lakeshore Learning Order Costs More Than It Should

The Problem Isn't the Price Tag

Last month, a third-grade teacher walked into my office with the latest Lakeshore Learning catalog in her hands. “How am I supposed to order from them?” she asked. “The easels alone are double what I can get on Amazon.”

I get it. As the procurement manager for a 400-student elementary school, I’ve managed a $80,000 annual instructional supply budget for the past seven years. Every quarter, I hear the same complaint. But here’s the thing: the problem isn’t that Lakeshore Learning is expensive. The problem is that most teachers—and frankly, most procurement managers—only look at the price on the label.

What I Learned After Tracking Every Invoice

In 2023, I needed easels for four kindergarten classrooms. I went back and forth between a $89 budget model and the $199 Lakeshore Learning easel. The cheap model saved $110 upfront, but my gut told me it wouldn’t survive a room full of five-year-olds. I decided to test both: I bought one cheap and one Lakeshore. Within a year, the cheap one was wobbly; by the end of the school year, the hinge broke. I then bought three more Lakeshore easels (using the teacher discount, which brought them to $169 each). Six years later, those original four are still in use.

That experience taught me a simple thing: most buyers focus on per-unit pricing and completely miss setup fees, maintenance costs, and lifespan. People assume the lowest quote means the vendor is more efficient. What they don’t see is which costs are being hidden or deferred. That’s the surface illusion of classroom supply shopping.

The Hidden Costs You’re Ignoring

This isn’t just about easels. After auditing our spending from 2021 to 2024, I found three major leaks in our classroom supply budget:

1. Not Using the Teacher Discount

Lakeshore Learning offers a teacher discount program that saves 15-25% on most items. Many teachers never sign up for it. They assume it’s only for big orders, or they don’t want the hassle of creating an account. I’ve seen a $200 order become $170 just by applying the discount. Small doesn’t mean unimportant. When I was starting out, the vendors who treated my $200 orders seriously are the ones I still use for $20,000 orders. Lakeshore is one of those vendors—they’ve never turned away a teacher because their order was too small.

2. Choosing the Wrong Printer

Listen, I’m not against bargain shopping. But when it comes to supplies you’ll use daily, you have to think long-term. Our school used to rely on a traditional inkjet printer. Every month, we were buying two $40 ink cartridges. That’s nearly $1,000 a year on ink alone. We estimated our printing volume at about 3,000 pages per month.

In Q2 2024, we switched to an Epson EcoTank printer. The upfront cost was higher—$299 compared to $79 for a standard model—but now we spend about $60 a year on ink. That’s a $940 annual savings. Within five months, the printer paid for itself. Why didn’t we do this sooner? Because we were stuck in the “cheaper is better” mindset.

Consider this: if you’re printing a newsletter to send home, USPS pricing as of January 2025 is $0.73 for a 1-ounce letter. Print and mail to 500 families, and you’re looking at $365 in postage alone. But if you have an efficient printer and a digital distribution list, you can cut that to almost nothing. I’m not 100% sure every school can go paperless, but it’s worth doing the math.

For context, a quick check of online printer pricing in January 2025 shows 1,000 flyers at $80-150; local shops quote $150-300. With the EcoTank, our cost is about $25 in materials.

3. Overlooking Free Productivity Tools

Budget leaks aren’t just about physical products. They’re also about missed opportunities. For instance, our high school students were struggling to keep track of their grades. We started directing them to a GPA calculator for college planning—a free tool that lets them input their grades and see their GPA instantly. That small intervention changed how students set academic goals.

Similarly, several teachers introduced a simple daily journaling routine (how to journal daily is just writing for 10 minutes) into their classrooms. The result? Better writing skills, fewer discipline issues, and more self-reflection. All at zero cost. Sure, it’s not a line item in the budget, but it saves money by reducing the need for remediation later.

What Happens When You Only Look at Upfront Costs

Let’s run the numbers on our actual savings. Four cheap easels at $89 each broke within two years. We replaced them with four Lakeshore Learning easels at $199 each (after the 15% teacher discount). The long-term cost per year?

• Cheap easel: $89 per year (if it lasts one year) plus $34 repair parts = $123/year
• Lakeshore Learning easel: $169 over 6 years = ~$28/year

Now apply the same logic to printers: the $79 printer cost $1,000 in ink per year, while the $299 EcoTank costs $60 in ink per year. Which one is actually cheaper?

Then there’s the hidden cost of ignoring student support tools. When we didn’t have students use a GPA calculator, they often realized their academic standing too late to improve. Catching that early saved countless counseling hours and summer school registrations. Similarly, classrooms without a journaling habit showed lower writing stamina, which meant more time spent on remedial writing tasks.

The FTC requires that advertising claims be truthful and not misleading, but that doesn’t stop vendors from using confusing comparisons. In 2023, our supply budget overrun was $1,200—entirely due to repeated purchases of low-quality items. That’s $1,200 that could have gone toward books or field trips.

The Simple Fix: Change How You Evaluate Purchases

Here’s what I recommend for any school or teacher: start a simple cost-tracking spreadsheet. List the purchase price, estimated lifespan, maintenance cost, and any discounts. If you’re spending more than $100 on a durable item, you owe it to yourself to see the full picture.

For Lakeshore Learning, that means:

• Sign up for the teacher discount before you place your order.
• Request the Lakeshore Learning catalog—it’s free, and it makes comparing products much easier than hunting around their website.
• Don’t be afraid to call or email them with a smaller order. In my experience, they treat every customer seriously.

And for the rest of your classroom toolkit: invest in high-efficiency tools like an Epson EcoTank printer, use free resources like GPA calculators, and encourage daily journaling—these are small decisions that compound into significant budget savings.

The Bottom Line

The stress you feel when you see a higher price tag is understandable. But that price tag is just the beginning, not the whole story. When you factor in durability, discounts, and long-term maintenance, “expensive” often becomes the cheapest option—and your students get better materials because of it.

Take the time to calculate the true cost of what you’re buying. The educators I’ve worked with who do this consistently end up with better supplies, happier budgets, and fewer headaches. That’s a lesson I’ll never forget: it’s not about the cheapest sticker price, it’s about the best value.