School days, school days. Kids across the Inland Northwest trudged back to school this month under the burden of school supplies that set their parents back for items ranging from snacks and paper towels to VHS tapes and disposable cameras.

Just how much families pay for the items schools tell them their children need is unclear, but education union leaders estimate their members spend an average $600 out of their own finances to meet classroom needs – more than twice the $225 they receive as an annual stipend to cover such expenditures.

And, as the year unfolds, teachers, parents and neighbors will be approached repeatedly to buy food items, wrapping paper, tickets to school productions, and a variety of other fund-raisers that provide computer equipment, science laboratory supplies and band and team uniforms. And, of course, there are those special operating levies voters are asked to approve every few years.

All this some three decades after Thurston County Superior Court Judge Robert Doran supposedly clarified that educating Washington’s children is the state’s paramount duty. Is this really what you had in mind, judge?

Oh, now it’s a problem. A debate is raging over a term Americans used without hesitation when the tsunami struck Indian Ocean nations. We called those left homeless refugees. That very term has been used by this newspaper and others in the media to describe displaced people in the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and it has triggered howls of protests from across the political spectrum.

They’re Americans, not refugees, says President Bush – as it they can’t be both. It’s racist, says the Rev. Jesse Jackson, even though it also encompasses white people. Others say such a term should be used only when people are forced from their homes for political or religious reasons.

Yet, none of these protests erupted during tsunami coverage. Did refugees in Thailand cease being Thai? Were Indonesians pushed out by politics or waves? Was it racist to call them refugees?

Last month, the Bush-Clinton Fund, which was formed after the tsunami, announced its first American recipients of relief-project money. The winner? The American Refugee Committee. Nobody complained about the name.

“Refugees” isn’t perfect, but it is an accurate term for conveying the utter devastation of the region and the plight of those left homeless.