This is the music our HS's playing for our show this season (I believe it's called Darkness to Light if I can remember right) and these guys sound really good. I like your visuals too :D Our drumline is in the front at one point, and then them and the brass are on the opposite sides on the field, so timing's going to be difficult between the two :l
As a parent paying the bill for a Bell marcher, we pay less than a cheerleader pays for their uniform in junior high. We do massive amounts of fundraising, have tons of community support and try to be as thankful and gracious as we possibly can. As with everything in life, there are the have and have nots, and I guess we are in the middle somewhere. More blue collar, than anything, but we sure do enjoy our marching band season. Best of luck to you and yours too! God Bless.
As the parent of a Bell marcher, I know we have used the same uniforms for three years. We try to keep close tabs on them and never make any permanent adjustments to lengths etc. Lots of community support in a district where median purchase price for homes is $120k. We love the marching band "cult" as we call it. Gr8 people throughout the country and a gr8 way to showcase all that is good about the USA! Enjoy it now it, all goes by way to fast! God Bless.
Wow! Thats alot, my band fee each year is $125 I am tin he Gadsden City High School Titan Band. We march anywher efrom 300-320. Our fee includes everthing except food at games,and our trip each year. We have been to New York, The fiesta bowl,gatlinburg,San Antonio. We were invited to go to england this year to play in same parade as southereners but it was going to be over 3,000 a person.
Broken Arrow isn't a "prominent" band so to speak. It has superpower status. Another comparable band is Avon that perfects high school marching. Avon is fortunate to be superpower status because of its communities affluence, quality of leadership, location (Lucas Oil, Carmel, etc), and student participation and drive to succeed. I would like to know where you got $1.2 million though.
What is broken arrow spending that much money on!?!??!?!?! they dont have new uniforms each year like LD Bell does, and they dont cover half the field with winterguard/drumline floors with printed colorguard flags and mechanical props like Tarpon springs, how do they spend 1.2million?
I went to a Texas high school and the only thing we did not have to pay for was the transportation to games (provided by the school district). Us students even had to pay out of pocket for the annual band shirt, and there were only about 80 of us.
I rather think we have large marching bands because football is a big deal. Soccer, baseball, and basketball do not, to my knowledge, have the necessary fields or intermissions to make a marching band for them worthwhile.
my friends payed around $600 to be in band there... i wish my school did that, it would keep out a lot of the people who are just there because they need a credit
Really cobb County? as in Cobb County GA, Wheeler and Walton High Schools? They dont have to pay that much in fact it costs more to be on the Robotics team than the marching band.
i dont think bell is as good as they're made out to be.... i mean yeah there good... but a history of state and national competition makes it easier...not discrediting how hard they work... im just saying.. they could have a terrible performance and still win......
Fine band! Love the marching & musicianship....but the word "unbelievable" makes me want to scream! I see & hear it, okay....so I believe it! Auuuuugh.
Learn to read better. I said at most the state contributes around $50/student to the band program. 99.99% of all the funds necessary are raised via booster programs. Hell, Allen HS just opened up a $60 million dollar football stadium - while teachers are being cut... The inordinate amount of spend that goes on in Texas is crazy beyond belief - its slowly regressing towards an antebellum mentality over again.
its also coming from the schools. every "good" band in Texas (Marcus, Bell, Coppel, Haltom, Hebron, Flower Mound, Richland Hills, Stephan F. Austin, Wakeland, Reagan) they all have school and district funding.....and I promise you...a trip to grand nats is more than $50 bucks per child
I wouldn't really say size matters that much. I'm in The Spirit of Central, Lawrence Central's (Indianapolis, IN) band and we've competed in Grand Nats every year for years. The past few years we've been about half the size of our competitors, but we keep up(:
Every time I see things like this, I laugh, because I'm from a 5A school who dosn't have the money to do this, yet we've beat several BOA bands in the last three years.
well i wouldn't say it was all about money. I was in the first year of our school to go to BOA, we went with $30K for the entire season for 130 kids.we made a regional finals for our first try out and we were ecstatic.
I was under the assumption that most extra-curricular activities are funded by booster programs. I dont think that schools would have a general "sports/arts" savings account to dictate money to - mainly it is a free for all fundraising scheme under the pervue of district admin. i think at most the school is required to maintain injury waivers and transportation - even then most big bands use coach buses.
thats why the Homestead Spartan alliance marching band couldnt go to and win BOA (cause they would have), their budget is likley a 4th of avon's or LD bell's and they have nearly as many members. from what i heard, they havent had enough to repair instruments like tubas for the past 2 years.
I meant that the schools in Texas actually put money towards their arts programs, not that the state funds them through taxes or anything like that. If I still dont make sense to you then oh well, because I live in Michigan and many of our arts programs aren't the best because not a lot of our schools have a whole lot of money to fund our arts programs.
What you say is true. I volunteer at my alma mater high school's marching band and they spend 110k every year for 140 students. Most if not all of it comes from fundraising, students dues and sponsors.
