How to Access Free Backpacks, School Supplies, Hair Cuts and Food for Michigan K-12 Kids
I was wiping down my 4th grade classroom desk last Wednesday, when Mia lingered by the door, twisting the end of her hair that had grown way past her shoulders. She’d missed the first pre-school supply drop off the week before, and when I asked what she needed, she mumbled that her only notebook had gotten soaked in a rainstorm walking home, and her mom didn’t get paid until after the first day of school. She brushed hair out of her eyes for the third time in a minute, and I remembered this exact conversation last year with another student, and how I used to just dig through my own supply closet and send them home with whatever extra I had. That helped for the notebook, but it didn’t help with the $15 haircut she’d been asking for, or the groceries her family had skipped that week to buy paper.
I’ve been teaching in Detroit for 12 years, and I only figured out how widespread these free resources are across the entire state of Michigan four years ago, when a volunteer from my school’s PTA brought a flyer to a staff meeting. Last Saturday, I helped out at our district’s annual back to school fair, and standing by the table of pre-stuffed backpacks, I watched a mom with three kids – one in kindergarten, one in 8th grade, one starting 10th – count out what they’d gotten: three new backpacks, enough pencils, notebooks and glue sticks for the whole semester, haircuts for all three boys after they waited in the pop-up canopy line, and a box of cereal, granola bars, and canned veggies to take home for dinner. She told me she works two part-time shifts at a fast food place off Grand River, and after rent and her car payment, back to school costs usually set her back enough that she skips buying her own laundry detergent for a month. This year, she didn’t have to do that.
Most people don’t talk about how much missing basic back to school needs shows up in the classroom. I see it every year: a kid who won’t raise their hand because their hair is constantly falling in their face and they’re embarrassed to be seen with messy, overgrown hair. A kid who won’t take their backpack out at show-and-tell because it’s a torn hand-me-down that doesn’t close all the way. A kid who can’t focus at 10 a.m. because they didn’t have enough to eat for breakfast that morning. None of these are big, dramatic problems that get sent to the office, but they add up. A kid who’s worried about having the right pencil to turn in their homework isn’t thinking about the math lesson on the board.
What I tell all the parents and caregivers that reach out to me is, you don’t have to live in a big city to get these things. Events happen all across Michigan, from the Upper Peninsula down to the southern border, and most don’t require any proof of income to participate. First, check your local school district’s website first. Almost every district hosts at least one free back to school event in August, and many post the date and location by mid-July. If you don’t see anything there, the Michigan Department of Education updates a statewide, county-by-county list of free resource events every year on their public back to school page. For haircuts, the Michigan Barbering and Cosmetology Association posts a free searchable map every August of salons and barber shops that are doing free back to school cuts for K-12 kids. Most are walk-in, no appointment needed.
If you live in a rural area and can’t find anything close, just text “BACK2SCHOOL” to 211, the United Way statewide hotline. They’ll text you back a list of every distribution, event, and free resource within 30 miles of your zip code, and they can even connect you to ongoing food assistance if you need it. A lot of the food banks around the state – Gleaners in southeast Michigan, Feeding America West Michigan, and even the small regional food banks in the U.P. – combine back to school supplies with food distributions, so you can grab groceries and a new backpack in one trip. Most events also have people on site to help you fill out the free and reduced price lunch application, which saves you the hassle of doing it at 10 p.m. after work when you’re too tired to navigate the district website.
Last Saturday, I watched a 9 year old boy carry his new neon blue backpack around the fair, stopping every two minutes to show another kid the side pocket that fits his water bottle. His mom told me he’d used his older sister’s pink hand-me-down backpack for two years, and he’d refused to bring it to any after school events because he was scared the other kids would tease him. That small, free backpack changed that. Mia came with me to the fair last Saturday, too. She got a new set of notebooks, a sparkly purple backpack, and a trim that cut her hair just above her shoulders. She kept turning her head to look at it in the mirror by the haircut tent, grinning.
I still send home paper flyers with every kid in my class every August, because a lot of my students’ families don’t have reliable internet at home, and most of these events don’t have the budget to advertise on TV or social media. It’s not a fix for all the stress that Michigan families face right now, with rising rent and grocery costs. Some days after I leave a fair, I drive home thinking about how we shouldn’t have to rely on volunteers and donations to make sure kids have what they need for the first day of school. But for right now, this is what works. Mia starts 5th grade next week, and yesterday I saw her on the playground swinging her new backpack, talking to her friends about what science experiments she’s excited to do this year. That’s enough for now.
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