$40 for a pair of kids’ uniform pants is *not* a good deal. Heck, $17 for a pair of kids’ uniform pants isn’t a good deal, either.
Kids are tough on clothes, and they also tend to grow out of sizes pretty quickly. So that $40 you spend on a pair of uniform pants MIGHT last the entire school year if you’re lucky, but there’s no way for you to really re-sell and get your money’s worth out of it.
I try not to pay more than $10 for uniform pants, skorts, shirts, dresses, and shorts each. I can usually get them from Walmart, Schoola, etc. for around that price (I have no objection to getting from thrift stores, but since *everyone* around here is poor (I live in a very poor area of the country) and all the public schools require uniforms, the thrift stores aren’t able to keep them in stock! Sometimes you can get lucky towards the end of the school year and pick up stuff people have just donated, but mostly people hand-me-down the uniforms if possible. It would be so much cheaper if we didn’t have to have those darned things! Anyway, I can usually get uniform shirts (the regular polo shirts, not button-downs) for about $3-4 each as well. And I also try to get as much unisex stuff as possible, since I have a boy and a girl who are just a grade apart from each other and are also pretty much wearing the same sizes, so we try to keep stuff as unisex as possible to cut down on costs (and the kids don’t care if they share the uniforms.)
So…yeah. Even $17 for a pair of uniform pants is just really high. Kids will wear them out, grow out of them, etc. and if you’re buying (5) pairs of pants at $17 each, that’s $85 just on pants.
I used to love shopping at JCPenney, but man o man, their deals have seriously gotten worse over the years. I’ve basically quit shopping there because the deals are bad, the sales are pitiful, the coupons they offer have ridiculous exclusions (almost as bad as Belk) and I don’t feel like shopping there, I get my money’s worth.