What Are School Supplies? A Lakeshore Learning Buying Checklist for Teachers and Administrators

If you are the person who has to turn a pile of teacher requests into one coherent order, this checklist is for you. I am not a classroom teacher. I am the administrator who has managed our school supply purchasing since 2020. I have made plenty of mistakes, but I have also stopped wasting money on the wrong kind of cheap.

So what are school supplies? For a school purchaser, the answer is broader than a student's back-to-school shopping list. School supplies are all consumable and durable items used to support classrooms, offices, and school programs: paper, pencils, markers, storage bins, classroom display materials, lab tools, cleaning supplies, and specialized equipment. If it has to be in the building before a lesson can run, it is a school supply.

Step 1: Build your list from usage categories, not from last year's list

I ask teachers to divide requests into three buckets. Must-run supplies are used daily: copy paper, pencils, dry-erase markers, chart paper, glue sticks, and basic first aid supplies. Classroom support includes room setup, storage, and display items: pocket charts, bins, and bulletin board borders. Wait-and-see items are things that would be nice but will not stop instruction if they arrive later.

One thing I have to remind myself is that classroom support is not fluff. Lakeshore Learning bulletin board borders are a good example. They do not seem like a supply until you are trying to make a classroom feel organized and welcoming. If a teacher requests them, I put them in the classroom support category and make sure there is enough of the same roll to finish the whole board. A mismatched border does not save money.

I should mention that a supply list changes after the first few weeks of school. If you order everything in August, you will probably order again in October. Use the buckets to push non-urgent items into a later order instead of buying them all at once.

Step 2: Inventory before you count out quantities

The cheapest supply is the one already in the cabinet. In our 2024 supply consolidation project, we pulled requests from around 40 classrooms and found unopened packs of sticky notes, enough two-pocket folders to last a full term, and a box of red pens that had been sitting there for at least a year. Nobody was hoarding on purpose. We just were not checking before ordering.

Take twenty minutes to walk through the main supply room. Check marker boxes, paper reams, glue sticks, batteries, and basic classroom first aid items. If I remember correctly, that audit reduced our first month's supply order by close to 18 percent. I would not call that a precise study, but it showed up clearly in the budget review.

Step 3: Time your order by deadline, then check the sale calendar

Teachers ask me every summer, when is Lakeshore Learning back to school sale? I do not have a confirmed 2025 date, and I do not want to invent one. If I remember correctly, the 2024 event ran mostly from July into August. I might be misremembering the exact start date, but the bigger purchasing lesson is still true: your deadline is the first date on the calendar, not the sale date.

To be fair, waiting for a sale can be smart. Sales save real money when the order is not urgent and there is enough lead time. But a late order is not a saving. If a teacher needs supplies before the first day of school, order early enough for delivery problems to be fixed. I also ask whether our institutional account gets a discount on sale items before I build the whole order around a promo.

Step 4: Compare total cost, not the lowest unit price

Most buyers focus on per-unit pricing and completely miss delivery trouble, faded classroom decorations, broken materials, and the time spent reordering. The question everyone asks is 'what is your best price?' The question I ask now is 'what is included in that price?'

A cheap roll of border might look like a win at first. If it fades by November and someone has to redo the whole board, the true cost is the roll plus the replacement roll plus the labor of redoing the board. A more durable roll of Lakeshore Learning bulletin board borders may cost more upfront, but if it lasts through several school years, it is less expensive on a cost-per-use basis.

I learned this the hard way with a vendor that could not provide a proper invoice. Finance rejected the expense, and I spent an afternoon straightening it out. The price on the purchase order did not include that hour. Now I compare total cost: unit price, shipping, invoicing, reliability, and expected lifespan.

Step 5: Do not leave specialty equipment off a school supplies list

When most people picture school supplies, they imagine notebooks and colored pencils. In a secondary school, the list is wider. For building trade classes, a construction calculator is a school supply because it handles concrete, framing, and stair calculations that a basic calculator cannot. For a health science program, a corrected calcium calculator can be part of clinical instruction. Those are not items you can assume will be in every catalog, so add them to the order early.

I will be honest: the first time I saw a corrected calcium calculator on a supply request, I thought it was a typo. It was not. If a CTE teacher asks for specialized equipment, ask them to confirm the exact model or app their curriculum uses. A small lead-time delay on a specialty item can cause a bigger problem than the price difference between models.

Mistakes I try to avoid now

If this checklist does nothing else, it should help you avoid four mistakes:

• Waiting for one big sale to place every order. Sales are useful, but a delivery that arrives after the first week is not a saving.
• Buying the lowest unit price before checking durability. Calculate cost per year of use, not cost per item.
• Ordering new supplies before checking shared stock. An inventory check takes less time than a reorder.
• Skipping invoice and discount checks. A quote that does not include shipping or proper invoicing can create problems for your finance office later.

So what are school supplies? They are anything teachers need to run a lesson, support a classroom, or keep a building functioning. That includes standard supply items and the less obvious ones: bulletin board borders, a construction calculator for a trades classroom, and maybe even a clinical corrected calcium calculator for health science training. Evaluate those requests with inventory, timing, and total cost in mind. That is how the budget goes further.