For Vita Grytsak’s four homeschooled kids, back-to-school shopping looks a little different compared to other families. In fact, their high-priced, high-ticket fashionable looks put her brood in a class all by itself.
Designer duds from fashion houses such as Burberry, Ralph Lauren, Bonpoint, LoveShackFancy, Ugg, Nike, and Adidas await her children — Mila, a rising fifth grader, Henry, a soon-to-be second grader, Olivia, entering first grade, and two-year-old Elise — for their first day back to the daily grind.
New York City Public Schools students, from kindergarten through grade 12, will be summoned to their assigned seats on Thursday, September 10, much later than previous years. Other school districts across the state start after Labor Day, between Tuesday, Sept. 8, and mid-September.
But Grytsak’s stylish squad, all except for baby Elise, are poised to resume remote learning via a virtual homeschooling program on Monday, Sept. 14.
The brunette and her husband have each of their tykes attend traditional school for kindergarten, before enrolling them into the homeschooling system for the duration of their education. It just works for their family and makes the mom of four more comfortable.
The setup requires her three eldest to engage with teachers and fellow pupils on-camera during school hours, prompting the kiddos to always dress their best — even if they never have to cross a doorstep for their ABCs and 123s.
“We spent about $10,000 on back-to-school this year,” Grytsak, 35, a married part-time dental hygienist from Rochester, told The Post. Although the upstater tries to shop sales whenever possible, she’s keen on keeping her crew in the most high-end, high-quality apparel money can buy in hopes of keeping their zest for learning high.
“I still want them to be excited about waking up and going to school, even if it’s in our home,” she laughed. “New clothes, shoes, bags, supplies, extracurricular activities, MacBooks. It all adds up.”
Adding to the estimated $30.4 billion back-to-school market, with parents expected to spend upwards of $557 on each kid for the 2026 to 2027 academic year, Grytsak is in the army of moms and dads shelling out beaucoup bucks to ensure that their little ones are equipped with the latest, most modish must-haves for reading, writing, arithmetic — and wowing, of course.
Unfortunately, however, the trend of spending obscene amounts of green is putting some parents in the red.
Owing to the exorbitantly high cost of living, with monthly housing dues exceeding $6,000 alongside surging food and gas prices, 57% of mothers and fathers are entering back-to-school season in debt, and 48% are either opening a new credit card or increasing their credit limits just to cover back-to-school expenses this year, per a new CreditKarma report.
Rather than tell their tots “No” upon being inundated with requests for luxe label finery, footwear, handbags, book bags and lunchboxes — not to mention upscale makeup and grooming goodies — some cash-strapped, yet overly accommodating folks are digging themselves deeper in the whole, working overtime, taking on seconds jobs and dipping into their emergency savings to answer the demand, according to the data.
A startling 49% of parents are even forgoing essentials, such as buying groceries or paying household bills, to indulge their little darlings.
More chilling, a whopping 54% say they’d rather make financial sacrifices, buying whatever social media-trendy item their kids want, over telling them “they can’t have what their classmates have.”
But keeping up with the Joneses — those glitzy momfluencers both online and on drop-off/pick-up lines at school, as well as the teenybopper tastemakers in front of TikTok cameras or behind school desks — isn’t Grytsak’s motivation.
Instead, splurging on her sweethearts is a labor of love.
It’s a hefty expense that she and other parents tell The Post they don’t mind shouldering, due to the cathartic benefits they reap with every swipe of their charge cards.
“It brings me joy,” said the mom, originally from Eastern Europe. “I grew up in Ukraine, came here when I was 15, going back to school there was very different.”
“So for [my kids’] first day, I want to make it special,” she said. “I dress them up and take pictures for the memories, and throughout the year, they’ll have nice clothes and supplies to use if we decide to do school at the library, or attend homeschool co-op events and life classes.”
Aiesha Myricks, 39, a Queens native now living in Atlanta, wants her daughter, Kylie, 16, to feel special from homeroom through dismissal, too.
So she treated the new 11th grader, who attends a traditional high school in Georgia, to a nearly $900 flight to NYC for a midtown shopping spree. The twosome blew roughly $1,800 on gear from Brandy Melville, Los Angeles Apparel, Urban Outfitters, Century 21 and Sephora.
“Where we live now, the shopping is not great. I mean it’s the South. It has nothing on New York City, so I didn’t mind flying us home for her back-to-school clothes,” said Myricks, content creator and Meta staffer.
To avoid the trap of debt during their expensive excursion, the pennywise mama — who routinely taps Kylie to join her in making viral mother-daughter clips for their over 70,000 social media fans — squirreled away $500 from brand deals they secured this year.
She presented the nest egg to her teen upon hitting Times Square last month.
“I saved up this year because I wanted Kylie to get everything she wanted, making sure she’d feel 100% comfortable and confident leaving the house, walking into school and focusing on her work,” said Myricks, admitting, however, that she spent well beyond her original $1,000 budget.
“It’s OK. When I was a teenager, I never had a big back-to-school shopping trip like this. I swept hair in a beauty salon for like $65 a week, and used whatever was left over after paying for food and transportation to shop,” she recalled. “So spending a little extra on her [heals] my inner child.”
Shelby Beatty, 32, echoed similar sentiments to The Post all the way from Dallas, Texas, justifying dropping approximately $2,200 on her 12-year-old daughter’s back-to-school outfits.
“She was at a $25,000 private school, wearing uniforms. But now, this is our first year of shopping for trendy clothes that all the girls are wearing,” explained Beatty, who scored over 600,000 video views on her middle schooler’s hot haul — featuring garb and accessories from Lululemon, Alo, Abercrombie, Aerie, Cotton On, Sephora and Hollister.
She chose not to divulge her daughter’s name to The Post for privacy.
“We’ve moved to a very affluent area, she’s the new kid in school and wants to make a good impression,” said Beatty, a fashion influencer and married mom of two, “and that costs a lot of money.”
But Beatty, similar to Grytsak and Myricks, says breaking the bank on her kid mends her own broken childhood memories.
“I come from very humble beginnings, and I had my daughter young. We struggled, we were on food stamps,” said Beatty.
“I’ve been that little girl that had to go without those trendy, high-end clothes each school year, the girl who felt less than,” she remembered. “So now, I don’t mind going overboard, making sure my kids have everything they want.”
Celiane Oliveira, 53, a private household manager in Fairfield, Connecticut, agrees.
She gave her 14-year-old daughter, Sophia Borges, carte blanche to balloon her back-to-school shopping budget from $200 to $743 while visiting the shops in lower Manhattan last week.
“We hit Lululemon, Alo, Sephora, Pacsun and Garage, then we went to Roller Rabbit [on the Upper East Side],” said Sophia, fresh from the two-hour trek into the city with her mom and best friends. “The experience is so fun and we loved walking the streets of SoHo together and taking looks at the stores.”
For Oliveira, footing the Big Apple bill was heartwarming, rather than gut-wrenching.
“Back-to-school shopping with my daughter brings out my inner child,” said the Gen Xer. “It takes me back to my own childhood. But now, I get to relive those moments as a mother.“
“It’s incredibly meaningful to create joyful memories for her while also healing and honoring the little girl I once was.”
