On Sunday, our local rag ran a piece about the staggering cost of senior swag - prom, prom dress, pictures, yearbook, ring, class trip. Not especially well off parents feeling pressured to spend thousands of dollars on OPTIONAL fluff: http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-senior-year-costs-20150608-story.html (may be behind a paywall). Is this more than just a SoCal phenomenon or am I completely out of it?
The other story is sobering. Though I hesitate to publicize a family’s distress over their missing daughter (who apparently ran away from her scheduled SAT at a top-racked public high school), a couple of classmates see this is a bold act of defiance. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-arcadia-missing-20150607-story.html
@winnvanmeter, dunno but here in Brooklyn at my son’s big public high school (which is a well regarded school) the prom and senior cr*p cost maybe $300 for the so called delux package. As far as I know, there were plenty of kids who didn’t bother even to go to the prom. I have no idea why.
If tickets cost more than $100 each, I can understand why students would opt out. I don’t know what’s worse - D’s senior class council spends an inordinate amount of time fundraising to make tickets slightly more affordable, instead volunteering for a truly needy cause. What a racket.
My daughters boyfriend spent easily over $1000 on the tickets ($200) promposal ( involved roses and 2 lbs of expensive chocolate) his share of a lake house the kids rented for after prom and the limo to get them there. Daughter felt bad he’d spent so much but his family is very wealthy, his parents give him little attention but lots of money ( by some miracle he’s a hard working straight arrow ( wouldn’t drink even on trip to Europe where it’s legal because " felt unnecessary")
My kids did say no to a lot of it but it still added up. Grad night (Universal Studios) $100. Prom ticket was $65, $50 fee for seniors (college transcript, grad tickets, something else, way too much), $40 cap and gown. Prom dresses and shoes? Don’t ask because we went way over budget.
On a related note, Julia Alvarez wrote a book on quinceanaras, elaborate coming of age parties that approach the scale and cost of weddings. The book was her attempt at understanding why families would make such enormous sacrifices for a one time event, instead of investing in education as her own family had. She - and I - came away with a more compassionate view of a seemingly irrational choice. The girls understood that the quinceanara was their high point. Very few had reason to believe that life would be more fulfilling than dead end jobs, broken relationships, cramped housing and too many kids.
For many LAUSD kids, high school is the bonding experience that the CC community values about college.
We said yes to cap and gown, yearbook and some photos. My kids did not go to prom or class trip to Disneyland. They did not want the class ring. To think that high school graduation is the high point of your life and to therefore spend irrationally on it, is giving up on yourself already at age 18.
Reflexively, I agree.
I don’t know what the answer is. For far too many LAUSD students, college isn’t a reality, so high school is their most meaningful identity-forming experience.
Just today, the LAUSD Board rolled back graduation requirements to allow 22,000 students at risk of failing to graduate. Under the current policy, introduced a decade ago to prepare students for entrance to the UC and Cali State systems, students need to earn Cs or higher in college prep classes. Today’s decision allows students to graduate with Ds. Wow. I understand that not all kids need to or want to attend 4-year colleges, but what a crippling set of low expectations.
At the other end of the spectrum, the missing girl from the other story has turned up. She reached out to her family and is now back home, after taking a Greyhound bus back home. Earlier, she had been seen on a different Greyhound bus bound for San Francisco.
I can’t understand why anyone but the extremely wealthy would spend so much on a high school dance. The total cost for my daughter’s dress, shoes, and ticket was about $150, that was all she needed, and she had a great time. There probably would have been another $25 or so for dinner beforehand but our school puts prom during April–I don’t know what they are thinking–and she wasn’t able to do dinner beforehand because of accepted student college visits.
Prom is really different in different places, and has been for a long, long time. My HS back east (way, way back when ) had prom “bids” (tickets) that cost $75/couple in the late 60’s, with the affair held at a ritzy country club, though we lived in a middle/working class community. Prom at some high schools on the west coast a year later were held in the gym with crepe paper. Prom at D’s high school had $20/25 tickets (per person), and while some groups rented limos, many didn’t. After Prom was free.
Proms cost money. I know my nephew spent nearly $800, it was not the highlight of his life, because he went on to become a doctor now. It’s just he went to a high school in a rich neighborhood and that was 2003 time frame.
For my two kids, kid #1 cost between $300-500, new dress, new shoes, etc…, 2008 time frame. Luckily, kid #2 was able to wear her sister’s dress for prom for her junior year. For her senior year, it cost kid #2 about $200-$350, 2013 time frame. Again new dress, new shoes, etc…
ChoatieKid just said no to such foolishness and skipped prom/posals. His school does not graduate in caps/gowns and yearbooks are free to seniors. We offered to buy him a class ring as a Christmas gift this year, but he said he has only one finger to wear it on (assuming a wedding ring at some MUCH later date) and is holding off for his college ring. I don’t think h/we spent anything on end-of-year activities. The joys of boys.
Both my daughters avoided prom for a few years (they were asked but declined): neither ever went. But my son is a joiner and more conventional and went twice, and paid for whatever was involved. Rental tux and share of limo I think.
Actually, I is much easier to collect money than to organize a “gym-graduation”. I realized it when my D grew up. Even middle-school promotion … for over a thousand kids , it is crazy difficult to organize everything. I tried to do it in middle school. In HS I am ready to pay few hundred dollars to avoid all organizational work.
What’s old is new again … I remember seeing in Real Simple magazine how a young couple produced their own low-cost wedding by “going back to school”. Report card invitations, cupcakes, banners and streamers. Today’s kids might not get the irony.
) had prom “bids” (tickets) that cost $75/couple in the late 60’s, with the affair held at a ritzy country club, though we lived in a middle/working class community. Prom at some high schools on the west coast a year later were held in the gym with crepe paper. Prom at D’s high school had $20/25 tickets (per person), and while some groups rented limos, many didn’t. After Prom was free.