Bring Your Own!

US schools ask students to carry own toilet paper

Shrunken budgets force schools to pass on some expenses to students

Constrained with shrunken budgets, schools across the US are asking students to bring their own toilet papers among other items.

Students in several schools now have toilet rolls, wet tissues, and paper plates, besides the usual load of books, reports The New York Times.

The newspaper cited a case of first grader Emily Cooper who headed off for her classes in Moody, Alabama, with two double rolls of toilet paper, three packages of wet wipes, three boxes of baby wipes, two boxes of garbage bags, liquid soap, paper tissues and Ziplocs.

“The first time I saw it, my mouth hit the floor,” Emily’s mother, Kristin Cooper, said of the list, which also included perennials like glue sticks, scissors and crayons.

Every student at Pauoa Elementary School in Honolulu need to carry a four-pack toilet paper stock.

While pre-kindergartners in the Joshua school district in Texas have get paper plates and cups, students at New Central Elementary in Havana, Illinois and Mesa Middle School in Castle Rock, Colorado must carry packs of printer paper.

To cash in on the business opportunity, and partly offset the sales slump, retailers of school stationary have begun stocking everything from wet tissues to plastic cutlery.