With back-to-school shopping season around the corner, the shelves in the storefront of Tools4Schools are already lined with spiral notebooks, boxes of crayons and rows of glue bottles. The price stickers for each item are labeled with points, not dollar amounts.
A box of crayons costs five points to the teachers who shop here. Each Wake County teacher is allotted 100 points to spend at the store, which opens Aug. 6.
“When teachers come here for the first time, sometimes they’re surprised. They ask, ‘You mean all this is free?’” said Keith Poston, president of WakeEd Partnership, a non-profit that operates the store and other programs that support Wake County Schools.
To provide all these supplies free of charge to Wake County teachers, WakeEd Partnership relies on donations from businesses and community members.
Tools4Schools is running a supply drive this month to help stock its shelves for the new school year. Anyone can donate new school supplies at drop off boxes in Staples stores or YMCAs in Wake County.
To kick off the supply drive, Wake County Superintendent Robert Taylor and the school board’s Vice Chair Monika Johnson-Hostler held a press conference at an area Staples store.
“We know that teachers spend about $900 a year out of their own pocket to be able to buy supplies for students,” Taylor said. “This initiative does a really remarkable job in reducing that impact.”
At the conclusion of the press conference, Staples announced it would make a $1,000 donation to Tools4Schools and offer teachers a 20% discount on school supplies they purchase at Staples stores across the Raleigh-Durham area.
Tools4Schools has provided more than $1 million worth of school supplies since it first opened in 2022. Poston said Tools4Schools was modeled off of the teacher supply warehouse in Guilford County run by the Guilford Education Alliance.
Demand is growing rapidly as more Wake County teachers discover the service. Tools4Schools gave out about $700,000 in supplies to more than 8,000 Wake County teachers just last school year. The store also relocated in January to the site of the former Bobby Murray Chevrolet car dealership in Raleigh, to provide a more central location and ample parking.
Johnson-Hostler urged community members, whether they have children or not, to consider making a donation the next time they’re shopping for office supplies.
“If anyone walks into Staples, make the choice, choose to buy something extra and drop it in this box for our students,” said Johnson-Hostler, adding that donations are needed not just in August, but year round.
State funding for classroom supplies in public schools plummeted about 15 years ago and has never been restored, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. After the Great Recession, state lawmakers cut funding for classroom supplies from $60 per student to about half that. Last year, the state budget gave a small bump in funding, but it lasted only one year.
"I know Dr. Taylor would prefer that his teachers had everything they needed, so you wouldn't have to rely on a small nonprofit like Wake Ed Partnership to fill in the gap," Poston said. "The state of North Carolina doesn't provide enough support for our public schools, and so until they do, we're going to do what we can to help those teachers."
See a full list of Tools4Schools supply drop off locations here. The WakeEd Partnership also maintains an Amazon wish list of items and accepts cash donations.
