School supplies are bought by parents ime. At the DCs' RC school the list is pretty long but of course most items can be reused from year to year so you don't end up spending a fortune every summer. For art, the art department supplies many of the items occasionally required for various projects (yarn, pipe cleaners, etc) but there are some projects where used household items like coffee cans or milk containers are asked for. Parents just sigh and buy what is needed. At least the list is reasonably well laid out. I have seen parents holding separate pages for each child. I know the local public elementary schools also have lists but they tend to be a lot shorter. No lists for the public HS. Individual teachers ask students to get whatever they say is necessary for their class, usually only one or two items per class.
The schools supply all textbooks.
By contrast, in school in Ireland when I was a student (at least in Dublin anyway), parents bought both school supplies and books for primary and secondary schools. There used to be lines out the door of one particular second hand bookshop (Greene's, now closed afaik) and all the way down the street, coming up to the start of the school year.
WRT evolution and the teaching of religion in school:
Religion is not taught in public schools, nor are there religious assemblies or assemblies where prayer to any higher power is expressed. The closest you might get to hearing about religion in a public school is in history class. In schools run by religious denominations there are religion classes where the religion of whatever denomination runs the school is taught. My experience is of a RC elementary, where the DCs studied comparative religion in history, but religion class was for teaching RC concepts. In the public HS they only encountered mention of religion in various history courses and philosophy. I was truly shocked that one particular English teacher who taught both DD2 and DD3 managed to impart her Buddhist beliefs to their classes, and I considered complaining but let it go.
The argument on evolution has been fought on a district by district basis afaik. Intelligent design would never fly in public or RC schools here, but DD3 has a friend who went to a 'Christian Academy' for elementary who had much inner turmoil in HS Biology.
School cutoff date here is something like 3 September, or it used to be. I think that put it in line with the local city school district that never started the school year until after Labor Day. Holding students back because of a late birthday is a possibility here, but in general it really depends on your District policy.
Alternate side parking allows street cleaning machines to attack one side of a street on their rounds at night. Eventually both sides of the street will be cleaned. Parking is a huge hassle where I am if you don't have a spot attached to your condo or apartment, or house. You might end up renting a municipal spot a good long hike from your home, and long swathes of municipal streets in some parts of the suburb are for monthly parking renters only overnight to 7am. The game changes if those streets are snow routes and there is a snowfall of over 2 inches. In that case you have to use your ingenuity and park elsewhere. There are also parking restrictions during leaf removal season. Leaves are removed to prevent flooding and freezing.
If you go on holiday you would probably have to leave your car in a remote airport lot. If you are in hospital you might ask a neighbour to move your car daily. In my suburb, you can't park on a street overnight for more than three nights per month (this is a regulation separate from the monthly street parking spot rental). It used to be a ridiculous five nights a year. You have to call the parking hotline after 10 pm to notify the parking office of your car's plate number, make and model and location. After you have used up your three nights for any given month you can buy nightly parking passes. I suspect municipal parking ticket revenue is very high. I got several tickets for leaving my car parked on the street outside my house overnight, having just forgotten to drive it around to my garage before hitting the hay.
I would feel so unsafe if my roommate was bringing people back to our bedroom for sex. Especially drunk men. I think that is terrible that you are subjected to that.
Quite often, your initial Housing questionnaire will include a question about opposite sex visitors to your room, and the university will try to match you with a roommate whose answer to that one corresponds to yours. You are supposed to negotiate matters like this with your roommate when you first get thrown together, and there is a student Resident Advisor on every floor of a dorm building to help sort out conflicts all year. If you find you are paired with a complete jerk you normally have a period at the start of the year when the university will try to find you another room. If problems crop up after that, it will be harder to find you alternative lodging but not impossible, and meantime you engage in dispute resolution or even mediation with the RA. At 18, you are expected to be able to speak up if you find you are uncomfortable, and to negotiate some sort of reasonable compromise.