Florida families are getting a temporary reprieve on sales tax for school supplies, and President Trump is pitching $1,000 savings accounts for newborns at a Georgia high school — but neither touches the real cost of a system that taxes parents into the ground to fund schools many don't want to send their kids to in the first place.
Florida's back-to-school sales tax holiday runs July 20 through Aug. 20, waiving the state's 6% base sales tax — plus county surtaxes that push rates as high as 7% — on eligible clothing, supplies, and computers under $1,500. The Gainesville Sun ran the math on a typical fifth-grade supply list from Palm Beach County: after tallying binders, paper, pencils, glue sticks, and the rest, a family saves roughly enough to buy a couple of extra glue sticks. The tax break on a $120 supply list comes out to under $9. That's the grand bargain — the state skims thousands from families year-round, then hands back pocket change and calls it relief.
Meanwhile in Georgia, Trump appeared at Wheeler High School in Marietta on Wednesday to promote Trump Accounts, a program launched July 4 that provides $1,000 to children born between 2025 and 2028. The accounts function like a government-seeded IRA for kids. White House spokeswoman Liz Huston framed it as giving "every American child a head start on life." But here's the catch buried in the details: only children born in that four-year window get the federal $1,000 contribution. Any child under 18 can open an account through a parent, but older kids — the ones actually heading to class this fall — get nothing from the fund. The school's chief strategy officer, John Floresta, welcomed the president and touted the district's test scores, saying the visit would "showcase the high-quality academic choices which make Cobb the best place to raise a family."
The Augusta Chronicle noted that Trump appeared alongside gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson and Senate candidate Rep. Mike Collins — making the school event as much a midterm staging ground as an education policy rollout. Cobb County, Georgia's second-largest district with over 105,000 students, is in a county Trump lost in 2016, 2020, and 2024. The optics of a president campaigning in a school building he never won — selling a program that doesn't help current students — land differently depending on who's watching.
Tom's Guide, covering the consumer side of back-to-school season, laid out what families actually need in a school laptop: portability under four pounds, battery life over 10 hours, and durability rated to military-grade drop tests. The Asus Vivobook 16, cited as an example, rings in at a price point that — even with Florida's tax holiday — still represents a serious hit to a working family's budget.
The Oregonian ran a nostalgia piece on high school reunions, celebrating the chance to reconnect with old classmates and revisit formative years. It's a reminder that for most Americans, the school years still carry weight — which is exactly why who controls those years, and what gets taught in them, matters so much.
The real question isn't whether families save $8 on crayons in August. It's whether parents who fund the entire system — through property taxes, income taxes, and sales levies — will ever get a say in what that system teaches their children. A tax holiday isn't accountability. A baby account isn't school choice. Both are politicians handing you back a fraction of your own money and asking you to be grateful.
