Parents gearing up for the back-to-school season may soon face sticker shock as prices for classroom supplies and lunchbox staples have increased significantly since last year.
Stocking a standard school supply list will cost families nearly 8% more this year than in 2025, more than double the rate of inflation, according to an analysis by the progressive economic policy think tanks Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation (TCF) shared exclusively with Scripps News.
While some products like highlighters, pens and markers have seen modest price increases, others – like lunchboxes, index cards and paper – have jumped far higher.
Scripps News
“Families are going to have to pay a lot more this year for school supplies than they did last year,” Groundwork’s president and CEO Lindsay Owen said in an interview.
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School lunch staples follow a similar trend, set to cost about 11% more on average than in 2025. A box of raisins costs an average of about $3.77 in 2026, up 4.7% from 2025. But a single loaf of sandwich bread will set families back $4.36, 21.8% more costly than last year.
“By our estimates, that means the typical family is going to pay about $4,000 for school supplies and lunches in this school year,” said TCF president Julie Margetta Morgan.
The Groundwork/TCF report relied on data from NielsenIQ, a global consumer intelligence company that provides retail and consumer data. The specific school supply and lunchbox products analyzed were drawn from supply lists provided by schools to parents at the think tanks.
Some parents around the country, meanwhile, say they’re already feeling the budget crunch.
“Having four girls and two boys, six altogether and one on the way – it’s pretty expensive,” Joseph Fitch III told Scripps News Group at a back-to-school supply drive in Lafayette, LA.
Supply costs have been rising steadily for years, but experts say the ongoing Iran war coupled with President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign imports are making matters worse.
“Energy price hikes filter through our economy more broadly in supply and transportation costs, but also in the cost of materials like the plastic that the highlighter is in, or even the plastic packaging that wraps up a composition notebook,” Owens said.
As Scripps News has previously reported, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz shipping route has sent oil and gas prices soaring since the Iran conflict began in late-February, trickling down to other food and commodity prices too.
The White House has repeatedly defended criticisms of the domestic impact of the war; a spokesman told Scripps News in May such “temporary disruptions” were worth the cost to “eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat.”
And though the sweeping tariffs Trump imposed on most nations around the world in April of 2025 have since been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, his administration has continued to pursue import duties via other authorities – just last week announcing a new slate of 10-12.5% levies on imports from 60 countries.
“While many tariffs went into effect before back-to-school season last year, a lot of retailers had actually already purchased back-to-school staples before the tariffs hit,” Owens explained. “The tariffs have now been in effect for quite some time, all of the school supplies that retailers and companies purchased this year are subject to those new higher tariff rates and they’re passing those higher tariff rates right along to consumers.”
Such price hikes come as regulatory changes approved by Congress last year have limited the number of families receiving food stamps.
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A recent analysis by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projected that the number of children receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits has dropped by 1.5 million since July of 2025, when Washington lawmakers approved changes to the program that tightened eligibility and imposed new work requirements.
“This is really a double whammy where families are facing rising food prices at the same time as their ability to pay for food is really eroding because they don’t all have access to things like nutrition benefits that they might have had last year,” said Owens.
With prices rising and wage growth lagging, data shows increasing numbers of American families taking on debt to cover basics like groceries and utilities.
“Families are increasingly putting their basic expenses onto debt like credit cards or short-term loans, and so these school supply costs are really a straw that’s breaking the camel’s back,” Margetta Morgan said. “Families are feeling really squeezed already, and this is just adding to that burden.”
Other parents say rising costs are forcing some tough choices.
“It’s about knowing which things to splurge on and which to save,” said Shayna VanKooten, a parent of three school-aged children in Peyton, CO, “just picking out which things are the priority.”
