I'm walking away from this. So much for having a dialogue where differences of opinion are discussed in an open and adult manner without nastiness or accusations.

No need to jump down my throat. Actually many military families qualify for food stamps, it's not all that uncommon. The military does now have a separate program which increases pay for those who qualify for food stamps so they won't have to use it. This in done in recognition of their difficult jobs and service to the country so no one is trying to say your relatives are lazy.

I in no way, shape, or form begrudge a child some milk and beans. My personal experience with this in military circles (where very few moms of young kids work) is that when they started requiring longer appointments, nutrition classes, and so on people stopped using the program. So many quit that offices on bases have closed. These are not people whose children are starving, they're people who were taking advantage of a program simply because it was easy to get some free stuff from. Once it wasn't so easy they realized it wasn't worth the hassle and started paying for those groceries out of pocket instead.

Wic is for pregnant or postpartum women and young children. School age children do not qualify so truancy is a non issue.

deleted since differences of opinion are not welcome here

This is how it was when I was in high school. It was maybe $120 then for the required calculator. It was allowed since once you were to the level where you were required to have a calculator like that you had already received your free, basic, publicly funded education. It would be nice if the funding for it was there but I'm ok with schools not footing the entire bill for advanced classes that are not required to graduate.

Our two oldest have iPhones. They're 11 and 12. They both got them when they were ten. There are days I'm glad they have them and others when I wonder why we did that. I will say it's a wonderful motivator when it comes to everything from chores to schoolwork. I just have to calmly say the phone will be gone for a certain length of time and they're suddenly very cooperative.

Has anyone seen bus fees that they have now? When we were looking at places we might be moving to one had a school district that charged $200 per child, per semester as a bus fee. What are people supposed to do if they can't pay and don't own a car?

What gets me about this is that charter schools were started in large part to offer educational opportunities to students in low performing (which are often low income) districts. Coming up with fees like this means the class divide deepens since only higher income families will be able to afford the fees for the charter school. In four years I'll have eight school age children. If a family like mine has the choice between a virtually free public school or a public charter with a minimum of $400 per student in fees and mandatory supplies they would likely have to go with the lower performing school because $3200 is a lot to come up, especially on top of doctor/dental copays, school clothes, haircuts, and so on.

I'm not necessarily opposed but those 15 are only bringing in around $70k and with recruiting for the program, fielding emails and calls, facilitating visas, finding host families and so on it seems that the equivalent of one full time employee would be occupied with this. If that employee, with benefits, is costing $70k how is the district coming out ahead? Are they just assuming their current employees will shoulder extra work and responsibility or, as I'm guessing, are those manhours simply taken from planning, classes, and programs that were serving local students? If they used the extra funds from the tuition to hire someone to do all this I'd be ok with the program but then they're just breaking even when they're wanting a cash cow. As it stands, with the district just trying to make a buck at the expense of time for local students I think it's wrong.

We never park in the garage. We have a big family and with that comes a passenger van and a really huge suv. Neither fit. I think the suv might fit by height but it's too long and the van wouldn't fit in either height or length. When we had smaller cars we did park in the garage. Snow, rain, whatever.... we parked on the concrete floor and didn't worry about it.

I picked up the 8qt instant pot. We already have the 6qt which I use all the time but with a family of 10 it's just barely big enough and I like to make leftovers. Now I'll have one for a main dish and one for a side or to set up for oatmeal. I also got a clarisonic brush I've been saying for a long time, a three pack of kindle fires, a pack of reusable k cups to replace our falling apart ones, a pre order book with the discount code, a $2.50 bag of caramel and cheddar Amazon brand popcorn, the audible subscription, and the unlimited music subscription (4 months for 99c total, I'll mark the calendar to cancel a week before that in case we don't really use it much but the kids are always asking for music at a dollar a song so maybe it'll work out well).

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no longer feel safe posting here

Thanks for all the suggestions! Lots to think about now. I totally agree with a separate table being best but we're getting ready to move again and need to get rid of stuff. Hopefully we will have a place to put a second table in our next house. We used to have a dedicated homeschool room and it was great for organization. Yes, one linear yard or meter of books is t much for so many kids but we're coming off a couple year gap in homeschooling during which we got rid of just about everything. All those books have been purchased in the past couple months. I'm also trying to keep things to a minimum until after we've moved.

When I look up spelling power I find a program with word tiles and letter cards and cd's. Is that correct program? (I'm searching for it on rainbow resource)