School Supply Blues Revisited

So I buy all these very specific and very many school supplies for Boy #1, for more than I think I spent on supplies my freshman year in college, I might add, and now it's time to test out the backpack. What a hellish nightmare!!! Boy #1 and I have 5 backpacks spread out around us, a rolling one, a sling one, a GIANT one big enough to hold a laptop, too, and 2 "regular" ones. We are testing them out, putting the 2 large binders (one for morning classes, and one for afternoon classes) filled with 3 spirals and 3 color-matching folders each, along with a pencil case per binder--in each of the backpacks, trying to figure out how this is going to work come next Tuesday. It seems like there won't be room for textbooks too. Not to mention that the backpack is so heavy I don't know how he'll carry it. And he is one of the bigger kids in his grade--almost 5'5".

What has happened in our schools? Why do 11 year-olds need well over $100 worth of school supplies? And why do I have to also provide Kleenex and paper towels for the classroom? You'd think that the almost $200 "registration fee" or a tiny bit of the property taxes I pay could be used for facial tissue. I don't get it, but I don't have time to think about it. I have to go to four different stores to return four extra backpacks......