Parker Street Food and Furniture Bank short on back-to-school supplies

It's almost time for students to head back to school, and that means it's time to stock up on school supplies. 

But for many families, buying items such as pens, paper, notebooks, duo-tangs and calculators is a major financial burden every year. 

Parker Street Food and Furniture Bank's Back to School Program provides school supplies for students every year, but this year they're facing a major challenge — they don't have enough supplies for the students.

"Right now we have enough supplies for about a hundred or so students, and we need supplies for 700, so you can say we need about 600 more bags of supplies," said Cynthia Louis of Parker Street. 

The room she was standing in had one long table filled with about 15 backpacks, and six plastic containers of supplies, which was was almost empty.

She says the situation is unusual for this time of year. 

"By this point it usually would be really full, there is no space where you can walk, so we're hoping by the time we hand these out we will have more items," Louis said. 

'We need more items'

If they don't have enough supplies, they will focus on students in grade school, and may have to turn some students away. 

"I don't want to think of that," Louis said. "It would be sad, 'cause you know education is very important." 

Louis said most times people think of crayons, pencils and lined paper when they think of school supplies, but they are especially in need of supplies for older students in higher grades. 

"We need more items, especially for those that are in high school, we usually run out of those items like graph paper, geometry set, the scientific calculators, USB flash drives, composition books, those are items we tend to run out of very quickly."

If you want to donate supplies for students, you can get a list of things they need by calling the Parker Street Food and Furniture Bank. You can also donate money online. 

"It is very discouraging, but like I said I want to stay hopeful and I know that the community will come through," said Louis.