The countdown to the first day of school is on in Philadelphia, and families shopping for supplies are confronting higher prices for many classroom essentials. The price of a typical school supply list increased 7.7% over the past year, according to an analysis by economic policy nonprofit Ground work Collaborative. Some individual items saw significantly larger increases, including lunch boxes, up 26.8%; notebooks, up 23%; and scissors, up 14%. “Families are going to have to pay a lot more this year for school supplies than they did last year,” Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, said. Experts say the war with Iran and tariffs are playing a role in rising costs. “Energy price hikes filter through our economy more broadly in supply cost and transportation costs,” Owens said. Those increases come as families are already balancing other household expenses. A NerdWallet study found a quarter of shoppers plan to cut back on back-to-school spending because of the higher cost of living. While the average family is expected to spend $611 on school supplies this year, that’s $130 less than last year, according to a study cited in the report. “With the cost of groceries and the cost of gas getting back and forth to schools, it’s a lot,” Zemora, a grandmother helping pay for her grandchildren’s new shoes, said. She said the price of those shoes also caught her attention. “I said ‘how much are they?’ And she told me, and I said, ‘oh, that’s a lot.’ She said they weren’t like this last year, but they need them sturdy shoes,” Zemora said. In West Philadelphia, Global Leadership Academy Charter Schools held a parent orientation Saturday to kick off the new school year. Organizers gave out 100 free backpacks filled with school supplies and helped families connect with services including internet access. “Tuition, school supplies, is a headache of itself, so why not make it easier for everyone else around us?” Salaar Williams, assistant manager at Bala Cynwyd ATT, said. For some parents, the expenses come alongside an already busy time of year. One mother at the event said she was preparing for both her child’s birthday and the start of school. “Her birthday is two weeks and then school is in two. So I’m like overwhelmed,” she said. For organizers, the goal is to make sure students begin the school year with what they need. “Starting on the right foot is the number one thing that we want to do,” Dr. Naomi Johnson Booker, CEO and founder of Global Leadership Academy, said. Families looking to save money may also consider using an AI chatbot to compare school supply prices. NBC10 took a third-grade school supply list from the City of Philadelphia, entered it into ChatGPT along with a ZIP code and asked the chatbot to compare online prices at big-box stores in the area. The results sorted the supplies by which stores offered better prices. The comparison wasn’t perfect, but it provided a starting point for shoppers looking to save money. This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC Philadelphia. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC Philadelphia journalist edited the article for publication. ...read more read less