A new semester often calls for new books and new supplies. For both college and K-12 students, that can be a heavy burden. 

The Tuscaloosa City Schools (TCS) system includes 21 schools across Tuscaloosa, with a total of 10,611 students enrolled. According to the state report card, over half of TCS students are economically disadvantaged. While state dollars and property taxes fund most of the city school’s resources, students and teachers are often left on their own to fund basic supplies. 

To help alleviate extra costs for area students, the UA SGA and their external and academic cabinets are teaming up to host a school supply drive this week. Drop-off containers will be placed outside the SGA office from Jan. 13 to Jan. 17.

“This year’s School Supply Drive is a partnership between UA SGA’s external affairs cabinet and academic affairs cabinet and Tuscaloosa City Schools to collect needed supplies for students in the district,” said Will Bradley, the SGA deputy communications director. “We’ve identified the 25-30 most-needed items and requested that students drop them in the collection boxes located at the SGA office.” 

All donations are worth up to three Greek points. Below is a full list of materials needed: 

• Plastic school boxes
• Crayola crayons
• washable markers
• wide-ruled paper
• 12-inch wooden ruler
• bottle of glue
• glue sticks
• Fiskars scissors
• binder 
• pencil pouch
• hand-held pencil sharpener without a cover
• assorted construction paper
• homework assignment pad
• 3-ring binders
• spiral notebooks
• black, blue and red pens
• highlighters
• index cards
• graph paper
• colored pencils
• calculators
• erasers
• college-ruled loose-leaf paper
• 1 ½” 3-ring binders
• 2” 3-ring binders
• mechanical pencils
• #2 pencils
• hand sanitizer
• reams of copy paper
• dry erase markers
• Kleenex
• magic erasers
• Clorox wipes      
  

The SGA would like for all UA students to come together to help local K-12 students have all the materials necessary for a good second half of the school year. This partnership’s goal is to give students the tools to enhance their learning experience.