Marching Band fees

[Ace]

I see part of the purpose of "schooling" as "learning how to do well with little".

I don't view "two 18-wheelers, $200,000 of props, state-of-the-art-instruments, 4 - 7 full-time band directors, etc..." as "doing well with little".

+1

[tofu]

Median Income in USA is around $51,000

If you assume Federal/state/municipal/FICA/sales tax take out roughly 40% (will vary to some extent where you live) that leaves you with $30,600

Let's assume you have 2 kids in HS (not unusual) and live in a modest 2 bedroom apartment - while this will vary widely across the US - lets say it's a modest rent of $650/month or $7800/year

$30,600 - $7800 rent = $22,800

now you got to have at least one car in most locations and many have calculated the true cost of owning a car at around $9000/year - but lets be real conservative and say you lease a small car with a lease rate of $250/month and spend $50 month in gas for a total of $300/month which adds up to $3600 year.

So your $22,800 - $3600 is now $19,200 - Gotta have insurance - the average in the US was around $900 so subtract that and you're at $18,300

lets say your employer has a great health insurance plan and your family's out of pocket cost (premiums/co-pay/deductible + prescription costs) is a modest $600/month or $7200 year

Your $18300 now shrinks to $11,100 Can't leave out dental costs - lets say you, your spouse and 2 kids just go in twice a year for cleanings/x-rays/checkup and you're looking at easily $800 in most places so your

$11,100 is now $10,300

Got a pet? Between Vet visit, tags/license/ food you are easily at $100/month or $1200 year -so deduct that from your $10,300 and and you're at $9,100

Monthly utilities electric/water/gas/phone and that's easily $125/month or $1500 so your $9,100 shrinks to $7600

Gotta buy clothes/shoes (especially with growing kids) and even if you shop goodwill etc. - you easily have to spend a $125/month or $1500/year for a family of 4

Now your at $6100

What??? You still NEED to Eat? Well even if you never eat out and shop deep discount food - you are spending $500/month or $3000/year to feed 2 adults and 2 HS kids.

So your $6100 declines by $3000 and you're going to live large with your remaining $3100 ...NOT!

You are not out of the woods yet - Family birthdays/ Christmas etc and you are spending a minimum of another $500 so your $3100 declines by $500 and you're at $2600

What - you need toothpaste,toilet paper, household cleaners, etc.? At least $50/month or $600/year so your $2600 is is now $2000

And now you can't forget stuff like furniture/television/beds/computer etc. and that stuff easily adds up over a year - plus spend $50/month on cable and internet and there goes your remaining $2000

In my area most of the costs listed would need to be doubled if not tripled. Many yearly costs are not even listed and this total above means on an income of $51,000 you are not saving even a nickel towards retirement, aren't going to the South of France (much less anywhere else) for vacation, have no major medical or dental operations and spend nothing on any luxuries such as a night on the town.

Many folks have their kids fairly close together so having two kids in HS and in band at the same time would not be unusual and asking somebody with the US median income of $51,000 to now cough up $1000/per kid or $2000/year for 2 kids - just for marching band - is unreasonable in my book. It's easy to see why people are struggling.

[TMurphy]

Our marching band (I say our, because I teach in the district, and do teach lessons at the HS once a week, but I have no involvement with the marching band) does 4-5 competitions a year, but there are NO fees for students. Competition fees come from the band's fundraising account, and we do not buy new uniforms every year. About the only thing the HS band does that costs the students money is go on a trip; this year's trip was to Lake George for about 3 days. It cost the kids about $200, with plenty of opportunities for fundraising. Most kids fundraised the entire amount.

I haven't heard of any school around here requiring fees to participate in the marching band, but I've also never asked; the concept is foreign to me.

[Dubby]

Haven graduated this year, $1000 seems completely unreasonable to me. Our schools musical emphasis was on concert music, not marching band. For us, marching band was the month of June with some weekends in April for rookies. 10 or so parades and our fee was approx. $250 with opportunities to fundraiser. We took coach buses to every parade, our staff was a director, 2 color guard coordinators, 2 drumline coordinators, and a college senior tuba player who was called a brass coach. Everyone else involved was volunteers. That was reasonable to me and we were pretty successful. During the school year we focused on making good music in band class with no field shows or anything like that. We had a football pep band which was come as you are and winter pep band that played at hockey and basketball. That had a school activity fee of $70 and you got a cool shirt. Now, our football team has been asking for a field show for years, but our director doesn't want to deal with that hassle which I agree with. Granted, our football team just won the state championship, but our pep band is pretty good and it's nice and relaxed. Kids don't want to put forth anymore time to work on band stuff outside of school. They want to enjoy the football game. So yeah. There's my $.02

[ken k]

Some schools here in PA charge students activity fees to participate in extracurricular sports and some include band.

luckily we have not come to that in the district where i teach. over half the kids in my district are on free and reduced lunches, and they were going to not make them pay the fees, so when they finally figured out how much money they would get in collecting these fees, they figured it just wasn't worth it.

If the school district wants the band to play at a football game then it is on them to provide some money to do it. Now if the band wants to compete and go to the extra shows, I can see where that would have to come on the backs of the Band Boosters and not the district, (at least not all of it).

The thread that bloke posted about the bands forming a non-competitive alliance is the county neighboring mine and I think it is a great idea.

[Jose the tuba player]

If the school district wants the band to play at a football game then it is on them to provide some money to do it

If only all school administrators understood this, my old highschool is trying to cut marching band as a class but still expect them to show up to the games and travel to away games on their own budget.
how can some people be so out of touch ?

[Donn]

Well, don't sweat it too much, it's just a few years. As an adult musician, of course you'll be treated with much more consideration, particularly when it comes to your financial requirements.

[Carroll]

Were I to ask students to shell out a grand for band, I sure would want to spend that money on something other than stomping around in a cow pasture in the middle of a boys' head-butting contest.

Well...sometimes we stop stomping and just play. And sometimes we go to stomping contests where there is not even the head-butting to interrupt us!

[Eflatdoubler]

All of the organizations are out of control. There are many bands here in Texas with similar fees, some way higher. It is crazy that anyone should have to pay extra amounts to go to a marching band competition. I have seen some bands spend almost 200k on a marching show (clinicians,props, etc.)!!
A friend of mine has to volunteer 10 nights to work at a Pavillion to fund raise for his kid in the color guard, or pay 100 bucks per day they don't (on top of the allowed fees by the school).
My kids are very young, but to me the activity and fund raising should be left to the students, and more along the 200-300 dollars max. Why pay money to learn completely incorrect angles to play at?
Even if it is just for concert band or whatever HS activity... this is public school after all.

[KevinMadden]

Paying a fee for marching band is ridiculous. I graduated HS in 2005, our band was non-competitive (though we did usually perform as exhibition at 1 or 2 BoA or NESBA shows if they were nearby). We only went to home football games and 1 away game (in tight years the 'away' game may have just been to one of the across town schools). We did fund raise, but our fundraisers earned money for each student individually to use for All-State fees and what-not (i.e if I sold $500 in coffee cakes and candy bars I got $500 to go towards that stuff). Band Camp was a few weeks at the end of august, at the school, during the day only. If you wanted to march at the next level you went to DCI. As I recall from 2003-2005 The Spartans DBC only cost ~$600 a year for everything.

[MartyNeilan]

Well he decided he didn't like 3 hour daily rehearsals every day (never even made it to band camp) and despite the best efforts of myself and the band directors he decided that he does not want to continue with the band program. Although it does save me much needed $$$$ I would still have gladly forked it out if necessary.
Two more kids to go through high school - currently the middle one wants to start horn in the fall and the youngest tuba in a couple years.

[tbn.al]

I remember what it was like when my son decided to quit band. He was a budding trombone star too. I insisted that he continue music in some form so he joined the choir. He was not dumb. The ratio of girls to boys was about 20 to 1. It was impossible to continue both baseball and band due to scheduling conflicts. It worked out ok I guess. Baseball paid for 4 years of college. But here he is now mid thirties and no music or baseball in his life. I might rather have paid for the college in retrospect. Bummer.

[tofu]

I remember what it was like when my son decided to quit band. He was a budding trombone star too. I insisted that he continue music in some form so he joined the choir. He was not dumb. The ratio of girls to boys was about 20 to 1. It was impossible to continue both baseball and band due to scheduling conflicts. It worked out ok I guess. Baseball paid for 4 years of college. But here he is now mid thirties and no music or baseball in his life. I might rather have paid for the college in retrospect. Bummer.

It's hard to have perspective when you're young - you think 25 is old, 35 is ancient, 45 is beyond decrepit & anybody over 50 is living on borrowed time! Music programs probably should stress more that music is something you can do for the rest of your life. I can't remember the last time I put my football skills to work - you just can't round up a bunch of older adults to go out on the sandlot and pound each other for a couple of hours playing tackle football and the police frown upon the random tackling of pedestrians.

I do think schools are getting better at trying to teach stuff that can be used for a lifetime in PE class rather than just the team sports that require lots of people, equipment and prepared grounds.

[ralphbsz]

Our high school (in a very affluent part of the SF bay area): All band students (meaning all wind and percussion) MUST be in marching band. You can't do just concert band. The band fee is about $750 per school year. In addition, you have to pay for instrument rental, which is about $150 per year (I think tuba players have to pay 2x that, because they need both a sousaphone for marching season and a normal tuba for concert band season, unless they bring their own horn to school). In addition, the band boosters ask for donations from parents, which seem to average about $500 or $1000 per family (I don't have the exact numbers handy, but the order of magnitude is right). This is done by the parents simply writing a check.

At concerts, a collection basket is passed around. Interestingly, it is usually not to support the band program, but some other charitable cause (like a local children's hospital, or the music program in a nearby school district that needs money for its music program).

I think in case of financial need, these fees are waived. Given that our district is affluent, I don't think this is needed very often. When my son was in middle school, he was in a different school district, which is a mix of all social classes, and a significant fraction of the fundraising ended up being used for scholarships for students who couldn't afford to pay the fees, including for the big trips (the middle school traditionally goes to Disney in 8th grade, for a concert and a music workshop, and two days of fun). We also used a lot of the raised funds to buy instruments, since in the poor district we couldn't rely on all parents being able to equip their kids.

In addition, there is an enormous amount of parent labor. I sometimes make the joke that our high school band should get the award for the most parents per student showing up at band competition. If you count the uniform moms, the food moms, the equipment wrangler dads, and the drivers for a small fleet of moving vans and band trailers, I get the feeling that the average student has 4 or 5 moms and dads. Putting together a marching band that wins regionals and gets invited to nationals is an enormous amount of effort.

The good news: With all these fees and that fundraising by parents, there is no need for the students to raise funds on their own. No Christmas wrapping paper, no cookie dough, no poinsettias.

When looking at high school today (our son is just entering the sophomore year, after having been 1st chair tuba as a freshman), I sometimes get the feeling that school is no longer there for the students, but the students are there for the school. Because if you look at the rah-rah from the principal and district superintendent, it does give the impression that the only important things are the sports team (in particular football) and the band winning. Although, to their credit, they are also very excited about things like the robotics team or the debate team winning. I'm sure they also care about the three R's (and the admission rate at ivy league colleges), but the noise is about football and band.

Speaking of sports: Taking part in a school sports team isn't free either. I vaguely remember the fee for the school's soccer team being around $250 per season; our son made MVP of the JV team, being one of the goalies.

Is marching band a good use of time? Should it be so competitive? Does it take way too much effort from the students and money from the parents? Or do its benefits (which are real!) outweigh these costs? These are all very good questions, worthy of debate. Here is our son's answer: he left the school music program this year, because he does not want to march. He does regret that he's going to miss all the fun. Instead he will be playing in a community college (concert) band, maybe in the local tuba ensemble (if it fits into the school schedule), and he's currently looking to join a youth symphony if he can find one that needs a tuba and whose rehearsals fit into his schedule (not looking good right now).

[Chadtuba]

Some "jock" band directors (not many, and not the smart ones) are actually "jealous" of extracurricular ensemble opportunities...such as youth orchestras.

I give my students extra credit points for playing in those types of ensembles and highly encourage it.

[Uncle Buck]

Some "jock" band directors (not many, and not the smart ones) are actually "jealous" of extracurricular ensemble opportunities...such as youth orchestras.

Made me smile. I remember years ago when I was invited to join the Arkansas Youth Symphony, my high school band director (who is now the band director for an unnamed University in Central Arkansas) told me "You'll put more into it than you'll get out of it." At the time I took his advice.

Funny, in retrospect I think his advice probably was more apropos to my high school band experience . . .

[tbn.al]

I remember years ago when I was invited to join the Arkansas Youth Symphony, my high school band director (who is now the band director for an unnamed University in Central Arkansas) told me "You'll put more into it than you'll get out of it."

Brooks was wrong, dead wrong!

[Uncle Buck]

Brooks was wrong, dead wrong!

[tbn.al]

Here is the ABA's position paper on the subject. Is it just "lip service" or is it just falling on deaf ears?

http://americanbandmasters.org/pdfs/ABA ... -Goals.pdf" target="_blank" target="_blank

Sure glad I got out when I did. I don't think I could have done anything to change the culture. I was told "off the record" at one point that 1st place in competition was expected and if I couldn't deliver then they would find someone that could. I soon after that quit and went into a business that paid production incentives for performance. That move has been the best thing I ever did financially for my family and I still get to make music.

[michael_glenn]

I just graduated. We had a $60 instrument rental fee per year. We had a $40 fee for copies of music throughout the entire year whether it be marching or concert season. I guess you could say we were pretty cheap. But then again.... We were a class C band.