I’m going to keep this short because I have a hand cramp. It’s a recurring condition that happens at the beginning of every school year.

It started a few weeks ago when I had to meticulously label 36 markers. Then I moved on to the 64 crayons, 24 No. 2 pencils, 24 colored pencils, 10 dry-erase markers and five red ballpoint pens, all with my child’s name written in ultra-fine-tip permanent marker. Then I wrote my son’s name on the permanent marker.

They joined the three bags of school supplies already bearing his moniker — items I had carefully hunted down: the vinyl three-ring, 1-1/2-inch binder with dual pockets and view-front pocket and an 8-ounce bottle of nonantibacterial liquid soap.

Just when my hand started to relax, school started and I received the back-to-school packet. Public-school parents, you know the packet. It comes every year for every child.

During the first week of school, all students — nearly 180,000 statewide — troop home with a thick sheaf of paperwork for parents: the emergency card and the emergency form (that require similar information about insurance and contact phone numbers but must be stored in separate places on campus), the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act form, the Student Publication/Audio/Video Release and forms to initiate online payment for school lunch.

The paperwork varies slightly from school to school, but many of these documents are federal- or state-mandated. Parents fill them out year after year, many of us without ever having to change an address or emergency contact during the kids’ kindergarten-to-12th-grade journey.

The technological advancements of the school system manifest in this pile of paperwork as the school laptop-rental agreement, the technology fee form and the Department of Education’s Technology Responsible Use Guidelines. Nevertheless, the public school system is still largely a handwritten, hard-copy kind of establishment.

I envision some poor state worker toiling away, spending an entire year keyboarding in this info, barely finishing inputting one year’s pile before the next year’s influx arrives.

Once I clear out all the mandatory paperwork, I move on to the second pile: There are after-school program registrations to be filled out, school pictures and yearbooks to be ordered, school uniforms to be purchased and consent to be given for student-athletes to play.

As I dutifully sorted through dozens of color-coded papers, I fantasized about the day when the cumbersome process would be streamlined. Each year I hope this will be the year the state finds a way to eliminate the literally millions of sheets of paper that are sent home each August.

Surely, someday parents will be given a choice to log in to an online parent portal that retains your child’s info from year to year and all I will have to do is review it, amend it and approve it. Click, click, click.

Perhaps someday the back-to-school packet will go the way of the library card catalog and the 25-cent school lunch, but not this year.

“She Speaks” is a column by women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Donica Kaneshiro at dkaneshiro@staradvertiser.com.