Is it just me, or have you guys noticed that more parents this year didn't buy their kids all of the supplies requested? I've never had so many students missing key supplies before and I'm not prepared to cover the cost to cover this many kids. What's going on?

I wouldn't be shocked to find out that parents are strapped financially and cutting corners on school supplies. There are real economic problems currently. While I don't have a requirement for supplies I do sense that some kids are obviously in difficult financial circumstances.

Doesn’t your school have student supplies closest? Our schools over here buy bulk/cheaper back packs, pencils, highlighters, etc.

They have them. However, they are using them as things to throw at each other. The only way to control the throwing is to stay at my desk. But even then, there is the reality that I have to do things other than watch the students, like work with individuals who come to my desk.

I limited the amount of pencils that I made available to the classes when I was finding broken thirds of the pencils all over the room, where they had been throwing them at each other.

The admin position is that throwing things is a classroom issue and is to be dealt with at that level. If we have issued a specific warning, to only be stated if we clearly see the individual throwing then, on the second clear observation, we can give them a 15-minute detention. However, the detention can not be served by students who ride the bus or are in sports. For those kids we can only require a detention before school, or they can serve their detention with the teacher at lunch, but only if the student and teacher have the same lunch block (we have three twenty-minute lunch blocks, for example, I have third lunch, from 12:50 to 1:10). In simple terms, admin is not concerned with stuff being thrown.

The supply lists parents get in the summer can be oppressive and expensive, and many supplies are not necessarily needed in the first weeks of school, so parents may be waiting until they know an item is needed.

Surely your school has some basic supplies that can be shared with the portion of students who do not have them. You can also email parents to remind them what may be needed for the upcoming unit, or whatever, but under no circumstances should YOU buy supplies for students unless your school will reimburse you!

Possible reasons for students coming to school unprepared include:
1. Families may be in financial distress.
2. Priorities. Lots of students seem to have very nice cell phones, shoes, etc. If they have enough money for bling, drinks, snacks, Starbuck's coffee, etc., but “cannot afford” school supplies, then the problem seems to be one of priorities.
3. Willful unpreparedness (passive aggression/resistance). "I can't do my work because I don't have a pencil."
4. Theft. They may have lost their pencil to other students. Students who demonstrate a desire to learn and a willingness to work would fit this mold. Students who slack off and refuse to participate would not fit this description.
5. Mischief. Another comment, from Kansas Middle School Teacher 1, talks about students using pencils and other school supplies as thrown objects in class.

Possible Solutions for Lack of Pencils (and other supplies)
1. Resupply your room from the school supplies closet.
2. Loaner pencils. A lot of mine were broken by students, though.
3. Sell a pencil or require a deposit. Some teachers at schools where I have worked charged a nominal fee, like $0.25, per pencil, if the student did not have their own and wanted to "borrow" a pencil from the teacher. (She stopped “lending” because the pencils almost never returned.) This puts a value to the student on the pencil, so that it is no longer someone else's money that they are wasting. However, some students may pay for the pencil and call it a cost of doing mischief, e.g., by breaking the pencil and throwing it at other students. Caution: Check school district policies and the principal's preferences first.
4. Verbal participation. Weight grades more heavily on participation scores and verbal answers to Q&A.

Brainstorming Ideas
Consider verbally administered exams and answers. Caution: this might be prohibitively time consuming for homework and exams, i.e., 24 separate face-to-face exams would take hours. However, perhaps a hybrid verbal exam, with groups of three students, each of which must be ready to provide an answer, extension, or rebuttal (and they won't know which because the roles are randomized). Possible barrier: verbal exams may not fit IEPs or specific students' preferred learning styles.

Good luck.

Last year my principal supplied tissue for the entire building when one of my students Door Dashed a box to herself at school in the middle of the day.

On a related note, I have a self-contained, computer based, all day classroom. My classroom policy is that the student provides “collateral” for borrowing a device or charger. They forget? Then they can give me their phones or earbuds for the day. Or they can call home and hope somebody brings it. Otherwise they are sent home on a one day suspension. Very effective and very few second offenders.

More and more parents object to being asked to buy supplies that other kids will use. Nobody wants some other kid to benefit.

Some of them will say (and rightly so) that the school should supply the supplies. And it should. It should be funded to do that AND to pay the teachers a fair wage AND to hire enough staff to run the school. But it isn't. So the alternatives are that the parents all buy just a few supplies, the teacher spends all of his or her money making up for the school funding shortfall, or you go without.

Your best bet is to go without. Explain to the class that you had fun projects planned, but the school doesn't supply the materials and this year's parents didn't send them as requested. You'll get some complaints. You might also get the supply lists sent in.