Three Weeks to the Bell: South Jersey’s Back-to-School Countdown Is On

The first thing you notice, if you’re paying attention, is the aisle. Sometime in the last week of July the store rearranged itself, and now the folders and the glue sticks and the wide-ruled notebooks are stacked where the beach towels used to be. For a lot of South Jersey kids, that aisle is the countdown clock. The bell is coming.

For most districts around here, the new year lands right after Labor Day. Camden City and Audubon students report September 3; Cherry Hill and Berlin Township start September 2; Barrington doesn’t ring the first bell until September 8. New Jersey leaves the exact date to each local school board, so the smart move for any family is the boring one — check your own district’s calendar rather than trust your neighbor’s, because two towns that share a border can start a week apart. That’s roughly three to four weeks from today.

The quiet arithmetic at the kitchen table

For plenty of families, that pressure isn’t about calendars. It’s about a shopping list that seems to grow every year — the specific binder, the specific calculator, the box of tissues for the classroom, the sneakers that fit this September and not last. Add it up across two or three kids and a back-to-school list becomes a real number, arriving in a stretch of the year when the summer’s extra costs haven’t cleared the books yet. That’s the quiet arithmetic a lot of South Jersey households are doing this month, and it’s worth saying out loud, because there’s no shame in it and there’s help for it.

The help this region does well

Across Camden, Burlington and Gloucester counties, the annual supply drives are already underway. Statewide, Jersey Cares runs a School Supply Drive with public collection sites where anyone can drop off backpacks and supplies, and local police departments have gotten in on it too — Gloucester Township police, among others, have hosted their own back-to-school drives, the kind of event where an officer hands a kid a loaded backpack and, for a minute, the whole relationship between a town and its children is just plainly good. Community groups, churches and libraries are collecting as well.

If you have a little extra, a backpack you donate this week is a knot untied in some family’s August. And if you’re the family that needs one, the drives exist precisely so you’ll take one.Emma Brooks

So here’s the community assignment for the next three weeks. Check your district’s start date and get ahead of the list if you can. Watch the shared shelf in the supply aisle before the good folders are gone. And if you can spare it, find a drive — Jersey Cares, your local department, your church, your library — and fill a bag for a kid you’ll never meet. September is coming for all of them at once. The nice thing about South Jersey is that it tends to make sure they all get there together.

Based on reporting from AOL/South Jersey, Jersey Cares, and Patch. Start dates vary by district and are subject to change — confirm with your local school board.