Dominga Perez, an unemployed single mother who lives in Los Girasoles, took a RD$5,000 loan at 20% interest to buy school supplies for her six-year-old son who is going to preschool at a low-cost private school. With a long list of requirements in her hand, Diario Libre accompanied her on her trip along Santo Domingo’s Duarte Avenue to buy her boy’s school supplies. “These teachers think that we are rich,” she complained. “I’m doing this because I missed the registration deadline for the public school… And I could not find a place.”
Dominga had a budget of just RD$1,800 with the hope of stretching it as far as possible. The budget does not include the (four) books that she has to buy at the private school. “I still don’t know how much they will cost,” she says. She bought some blue jeans, a blue polo shirt, four 200-page notebooks, a lunchbox, a ream of white paper, two boxes of colored pencils, a pencil sharpener, two erasers, a bottle of glue, two sheets of craft paper, and three pencils. The total cost: RD$1,056. She has RD$744 left but still has to get colored thread, toilet paper, a backpack… “For now he will go to school with some old shoes, until some money shows up….”
Another example is Ana Rodriguez who was buying school supplies for her two daughters. In her shopping cart she had notebooks, pencils, ballpoint pens, white out, blank paper, a pair of khaki pants, book covers, a T-shirt, a set of rulers, a pencil case…. Total cost: RD$5,828. She said that she had already spent RD$6,004 on uniforms and backpacks. She estimates the cost of sending each girl to school at RD$15,000. Although she did not have to take out loans like other parents, Ana said that she did “have to cut back on several little things” to prevent affecting the family budget even more.