ALLENTOWN, Pa. – As summer comes to a close and families prepare for the start of a new school year, the cost of back-to-school shopping continues to climb.<\/p>\n
According to the National Retail Federation, families with students in elementary through high school plan to spend an average of about $863 on school-related purchases this year, an increase of $5 from last year.<\/p>\n
To help ease some of that financial burden, volunteers with PPL gathered for the utility company’s annual Backpack Builders event, packing thousands of school supply kits for local students.<\/p>\n
“We’re at our Backpack Builders, our annual packing event where we have our volunteers come out, pack supplies for students that they can use for the upcoming school year,” said Damon Turbitt, spokesperson for PPL.<\/p>\n
Volunteers assembled approximately 2,500 backpacks filled with essential school supplies for elementary school students throughout the region.<\/p>\n
Turbitt said providing students with the supplies they need helps remove barriers to learning before classes even begin. “If you want to start off the school year well, these supplies are just one way to break down a barrier and let these students focus on the school year ahead,” he said.<\/p>\n
For volunteer Vivian Ramos, the event has become an annual tradition. This year marks her third time helping prepare backpacks for local children.<\/p>\n
“We unpack the boxes, we make sure that they have all the supplies that they need, like pencils, erasers, notebooks,” Ramos said. “Kids get excited about that stuff. They like to open up their backpack and see all the fun school tools that they have.”<\/p>\n
Once packed, the backpacks will be distributed to area schools and students ahead of the start of the school year, helping ensure children have the supplies they need on their first day of class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – As summer comes to a close and families prepare for the start of a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154],"class_list":["post-260056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}