Tens of thousands of students will stream back to Colorado classrooms this month, their backpacks loaded with pencils and paper, binders and ballpoint pens — and, increasingly, items that schools used to supply: tissues, cotton balls, hand wipes, ziplock bags.

The price tag to equip one child can easily reach $100 to $150, school officials and parents say. And that doesn’t include clothes, shoes and specialty items like calculators.

“It’s a big change” from the past, said Lorraine Alcott, who volunteers at an annual supply giveaway for Jefferson County Public Schools students. “It just seems that our (supply) lists just get longer and longer.”

Every student at one school was asked to bring five dozen pencils on their first day to bolster the school’s dwindling supply, Alcott said.

Read the full story on The Denver Post website, click here.