Metea Valley has been facing a tissue shortage since November, with very few boxes of tissue across the school. This shortage is reflected in classrooms and class houses, where there is a lack of tissue boxes.

“You run out of tissues at home, no big deal, you go to a store,” Vice Principal Rodney Jones said. “You run out of tissues in school, that’s a bigger deal.” 

According to Jones, North American Supply, our school’s tissue supplier, had a smaller shipment sent to Metea compared to the average shipment size. 

The school’s tissue usage also went above average compared to previous years. This leads to the school using up more tissue boxes than usual in a shorter amount of time.

“We had our set inventory, and we probably, for whatever reason, needed a little more in conjunction with the supplier,” Jones said. 

Jones continued to elaborate on how the supplier also had issues on their end with sending the shipment size the school usually receives.

 Principal Daniel DeBruycker also said that the tissue shortage is not a district-wide issue, localizing the problem to Metea. He also elaborated on how another source of the issue may be budgeting. 

“We only have a certain budget amount each month,” DeBruycker said.  “We may have spent more of the budget on different items… [like] paper towels, toilet paper…”

Another solution could be for students and teachers to bring in a box for their classrooms; however, DeBruycker said that won’t be an enforced course of action.

“They can [bring tissues], but we don’t demand [they] use their funding resources for things we should supply,” Debruycker said.

Metea’s building manager, Gerrado Nunez, said that a new shipment comes in at the start of every month during the first full week, aiming for Metea’s classrooms to be stocked with a steady supply of tissues come the start of December in preparation for the winter months.