HERMISTON — Hermiston parents have enough to worry about as they send their children back to school in a few weeks, but paying for all their school supplies will not be one of them. When students reenter the classroom they will have nearly all their basic supplies covered — from scissors to glue sticks to notebooks.

The only thing Hermiston School District Superintendent Tricia Mooney asks students to bring? A backpack, lunch bag and water bottle.

“As far as the supplies that students need to complete instructional tasks,” Mooney said, “we are going to supply all of those.”

All supplies will remain in the classroom, however, so students still will need some materials at home to complete homework or independent projects.

In addition to providing elementary and middle school supplies, Hermiston School District also will be waiving pay-to-play fees for grades six through 12. Mooney said while she expects the $85 athletic fee per sport to be discontinued going forward, families still have to buy some equipment.

“We just want to offer this opportunity for our kids and not have that be a barrier at all,” Mooney said.

These two changes, school supplies and athletics fees, come from two separate funding streams, Mooney said. The school district’s general fund will cover the athletics fees while federal relief money, known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, will cover school supplies.

This round of ESSER funds, the third installment of Education Stabilization Funds from the federal CARES act, became available for K-12 after the Department of Education approved their release on July 15.

Oregon, which has been granted about $1.1 billion in education funding to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, can spend the ESSER funds to address a long list of issues.

According to the press release, “The approval of these plans enables states to receive vital, additional American Rescue Plan funds to quickly and safely reopen schools for full-time, in-person learning; meet students’ academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs; and address disparities in access to educational opportunity that were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

Mooney said they calculated how much each district would receive by looking at the average number of students enrolled and placed restrictions on how they could spend the money. Hermiston School District has received a total of $16.75 million in ESSER grants according to data compiled from the Oregon Department of Education.

“Because of how those funds are targeted and being able to provide opportunities for students, because of COVID, we were able to utilize those funds to provide the school supplies,” Mooney said.

In prior years the school district would release a supply list and have parents purchase all necessary supplies. If they couldn’t afford supplies, community groups and organizations would often donate supplies to those who didn’t have access to them.

“I think it’s fantastic that the school district is providing supplies,” said Reagan Bass, an employee of Umatilla-Morrow County Head Start, an agency that provides services to families in the Hermiston School District and neighboring areas. “When you have six kids it adds up,” she added.

The idea to provide school supplies started last year when COVID-19 hit, said Briana Cortaberria, Hermiston School District’s communication officer and executive assistant.

Cortaberria said each class began to have its own supplies in response to safety measures and to maintain the health and safety of students.

“It kind of came out of a progression of what we learned last year,” Mooney said.

While the total cost of school supplies that Hermiston School District requested in 2019 ranges between $25-$50 if buying the cheapest items at Walmart, this number can quickly add up as the number of children in a family increases. This number also increases as school supplies, such as pencils and paper, run out throughout the school year, forcing parents to buy replacements.

This number does not include other common back-to-school shopping supplies, such as clothing and electronics, which Hermiston School District will not be providing.

This move to provide basic school supplies comes as spending for back-to-school shopping continues to hit record highs, according to the National Retail Federation. A survey published by the NRF that involved 7,704 participants found that families with children grades K-12 plan to spend an average of nearly $850 per family in 2021, up from an average of almost $700 in 2019 — an increase of more than 21%.

“Coming off what’s been a difficult year for all of our families, and I think we have a lot of families that have some financial uncertainty, we just felt like this was a good use of those funds to be able to provide that opportunity for all of our kids to have access to the same equity in their school supplies,” Mooney said.

She said the district plans to reassess whether school supplies are a priority going forward.