www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com This is the 10th year the Cops and Kids program is helping kids and their parents get a head start on their back-to-school shopping.

“This helps kids start off with something nice,” said Mike Jones who was at the event with two young students. “It’s great. They get free book bags and shoes and socks. This is our first time being here and we sure do appreciate it.”

His eighth-grader, Jayquan White, looked through the Nikes and Adidas shoes at the store. White said he wanted something stylish. Meanwhile, a rising third-grader, Karissa Smith, reached for a white pair of sneakers as her two older brothers yelled out that they wanted something “trendy.”

“My baby,” her dad, Keytta Smith said, “she likes to pick out her own stuff. She’ll pick out something eventually. Events like this come in handy though. We got stuff like paper, notebooks, glue, crayons, markers. It’s all stuff that they need that we won’t need to buy.”

The average parents’ spending per student is expected to be as much as $270 this back-to-school season, compared with roughly $250 in 2020, according to a survey conducted by accounting organization KPMG.

SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com