With lunch boxes and notebooks replacing pool toys in the stores, mums' palettes waiting to be planted, and social media overflowing with photos of the first day of school, there's no denying that summer is fast approaching its end.
With the start of the new school year comes a list of school supplies that parents must purchase, and in post-apocalyptic scenes, thousands of parents are stockpiling everything from crayons to wet wipes from the shelves of their local big-box stores.
Inevitably, there are debates about what schools should provide and what parents should be responsible for, as well as concerns about the fairness of communally mixing high-quality supplies provided by wealthy families with budget items donated by other families.
As the free lunch program expands in Prince William County and Manassas schools, the question of what the school system should provide to students has become a hotly contested topic. But the debate over what should be given to students for free is not new.
Over a century ago, Manassas Journal publisher WHW Moran wrote, “Some say we should provide textbooks free. But the reasons for giving children free books are the same as those for giving them free shoes or free lunches. Most children need both. Besides, has anyone ever calculated the true cost of this futile proposal?”
Moran's November 3, 1911 article lamented the planned allocation of Virginia's budget surplus, concluding with the sentence, “Why not leave this revenue for the future where it belongs? In the taxpayers' pockets?”
This sentiment is echoed in the current debate over free school meals, but it is hard to imagine that the same people who bemoan taxpayer-subsidised school meals would also be arguing for the abolition of free textbooks.
Twenty years after Moran's fierce denunciation, the debate over what schools should provide free to students continued as the Great Depression hit the county. A September 10, 1931, letter to the editor in the Manassas Journal expressed concern that economic hardship would prevent children from attending public schools: “Work is for adults. School is for young people. If families cannot buy clothes, shoes and textbooks, the community must do it.”
W. C. Bibb renewed his appeal for free textbooks in the Manassas Journal on January 19, 1933, writing, “I am convinced that the free provision of textbooks is essential to the greatest efficiency of our schools. Textbooks are, after all, one of the essential costs of an efficient school system and should be provided for by tax money.”
Despite this, it remained the responsibility of parents to rent or buy textbooks for their children, as taxpayers were unwilling to cover the cost.
In 1916, 17 years before Bibb's petition, the Virginia General Assembly passed a bill providing that “each district board of education in this state shall be authorized to provide free to all pupils in the public schools all books adopted for use in said schools; the cost of such books shall be defrayed by each district board of education out of funds herein provided.”
But this spending required the request of 25% of local voters who had voted in the last election, and then voter approval in the next general election. Thirty-five years after the measure passed, parents in Prince William County were still trying to put a local referendum on whether to provide textbooks to students at taxpayer expense.
According to Agnes Webster's letter to the editor of September 20, 1951, she and other mothers were chatting in a local store when a woman lamented, “Twelve dollars. That's what we had to pay for Johnny's books this year. Sally, Tom, and Frannie haven't even brought the list home yet.”
For comparison, $12 in 1951 would be equivalent to $145.17 today.
The Brentsville Area High School Textbook Improvement Committee advocated for free textbooks at Prince William. According to a November 1, 1951 Manassas Journal article, the committee members “voted to share the results of a study on the merits of free textbook distribution,” as required by the 1916 law.[T]The whole county must buy into the project to ensure free provision of textbooks.”
Although the issue never appears to have been put to a vote in Prince William, a free textbook bill was introduced in the House of Representatives in 1975. The bill failed to pass. A bill was introduced again in 1989, but also failed to pass. In the 1991-1992 school year, Virginia collected $11.8 million in textbook rental fees from parents. Finally, in 1994, textbooks were distributed free of charge to public school students throughout Virginia.
Today it seems absurd to deny textbooks to students because their parents cannot afford them. What good is education if there are no books to learn from? And what good are books if there is no energy to read them?
As we enter the 2024-25 school year, we need to consider whether future generations will consider us outdated in our belief that a student without food is more likely to succeed than a student without a book.
Christina Noe is a politically fluid voter, an education nerd, a PhD student in American History at George Mason University, and someone who remains a proud Prince William.