Just curious, but does everyone automatically go, or are there any limitations such as for somebody who didn’t raise enough money?
I am not sure.
I have never heard of anyone being left behind due to money factors.
And believe me, it would have been a big deal.
To expand.
IMO, it has been this way for so long, it has basically become a “norm”.
In Middle School if you are planning on being in the band in High School, you (and the parents) know the expectation.
When my son did XC his muni team would often win state championship so wed go to NM or Hilton Head or Florida for national championships but we didnt do fundraisers. What would typically happen is the fastest kids couldnt afford to go so wed get clobbered. A couple times the coach would pay airfare for a few kids and id put them up in rooms and feed em for the weekend.
We used to call this type of stuff… dues.
I don’t remember the exact explanation, but I recall that it boiled down to them not being able to say or imply the fee was mandatory. Don’t ask me why. I still think they could have thought of a better term, but I could tell I was not going to get anywhere.
Prior to 1969 New York City had Public colleges that were free to any student who lived in New York City. However they had such high admissions and academic standards that they were called the poor man’s Harvard. It was a great way for very smart children of immigrant to get a fantastic education and some of the greatest minds of all time were educated at city college
Then in 1969 there were protests to allow everyone in New York City to go there. Consequently its academic standards were lowered to the point that they had to use text books written on an eighth grade level because the average student at city college was reading on an eighth grade level.
A perfect example of what happens when the standards of an excellent academic institution are lowered to accommodate students who are not qualified to attend it.
When city college was free to only exceptional students it was a very good use of public funds because it gave very smart children with limited financial resources an opportunity to became a very productive member of society. Now it is a classic waste of public funds for obvious reasons.
Even though I have a problem when people who don’t belong in college get scholarships, a feel that a good student shouldn’t be deprived of the opportunity to go to college because they can’t afford it.
If enough people were to know that and decide not to pay they would change their tune pretty fast or end the program.
Actually, I think almost everybody knows that they can not pay. They were really big on stressing that they could not call it mandatory. That was due to some type of regulations and not the band’s own decision. And, my experience on the board was for only one year in middle school. For high school I have only been a parent attending the meetings. From what I can see, by that time most parents whose kids are in band know they will have to pay something.
I remember telling the band director that for the first parents meeting he had to show them all of the things the band did and how they all had expenses, then bring up the money. The previous year he had only mentioned the money up-front, without giving examples of what it was used for.
I also later told him that I thought they should let people know in advance of the expected financial commitment before their kids registered. He said that might scare some kids off, but I said it would ensure that the ones who did sign up had parents who had no problems with the financial fee. As it was, he was complaining about how so many parents simply didn’t pay anything at all, and how it wasn’t fair to those who did.
The one thing he could do was limit some things that students were allowed to participate in if their parents had not paid the fee. That seemed like a lousy thing to do to the student, but there weren’t many alternatives. Like I said earlier, they went out of their way to let parents know that if they had financial issues they could come and see them privately to work something out. Some did do so, but many did not.
I don’t know the situation there, but I can see where it could be an issue if they relied on fund raisers to fund these trips.
I was in JROTC in high school, and we didn’t get squat from the district. We had to raise all of our money for the various activities. When we went on an overnight field trip somewhere, we had a bus that could take so many students. Everybody was then ranked in order of how much they had sold//raised, etc. Then, they determined the order to board the bus based on this list. Was it the best way to do things? It was probably the only way to do it under the circumstances. And, I can safely say that nobody who had their heart set on going on a trip missed out. There were more students that went than who did not, and the rules were known in advance.
In this case, if they are relying on fund raising here and everybody is going, I could see where there could be issues if somebody didn’t raise enough. That brings up the issue of whether it is fair to those who are raising enough. To me, I would think there would need to be some minimum standard to qualify to go on the trip, with extenuating circumstances to be allowed to be considered.
That goes to what I said earlier. Everybody knowing the expectation in advance is important.