Parents of Socorro students may not need to spend much on back to school expenses this fall.

Socorro Consolidated School District schools will provide students with free supplies this year, with the exception of Cottonwood Charter School. The school district had extra COVID relief funding. Cottonwood received separate federal COVID relief funds, and allocated those funds separately.

Students at Midway, Parkview, San Antonio, Sarracino and Socorro High School will just need to bring a backpack and optionally a water bottle. Supplies like paper, pencils, notebooks, colored pencils, pens and crayons will be provided to students by their schools.

Superintendent Ron Hendrix said that the San Antonio school typically conducts a fundraiser to buy students school supplies every year, but providing free school supplies is new for the rest of the district.

“We just felt like with inflation the way it is right now and gas prices and stuff like that, we wanted to do it and we had some of that federal funding so we thought it was a good idea,” said Hendrix.