Sorry so long, pardon me while I vent!
All my husband and I wanted was for our daughter, a junior in high school, to enjoy pursuing an extracurricular activity she had an interest in. She's very shy and this seemed like an opportunity for her to make new friends and come out of her shell a little. We were prepared to bend our schedules and adjust our budget (within reason) for this as needed. But no one informed us that we needed to have money to burn and nothing important to do with our time. Silly me thought this was something that would be accessible to the average family - most of whom are feeling the strain of a poor economy at this time.
When all is said and done we will have had to spend about $1500 over an 8 month period and given up much of our already limited spare time and gas driving our child to and from practices. $300 for band camp I understand (and we've had to stifle many giggles at the thought of it), but their trip to the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix will cost $600 each! That's on top of the various and sundry charges -an average of $75-$100 a month on everything from shorts to duffle bags. Oh, and they charge to go to the football games (though we can buy a family season pass for only $100
).
We've had to upgrade to a more expensive cell plan that covers a lot of texting because apparently that's how twirl communicates. Apparantly no one will actually talk to another person on a phone - or just make a schedule and stick to it (now there's an idea!).
We are told she can't miss a practice or it will count against her grade, and if she's late she gets penalized (twirl is also one of her classes). This is made especially hard with insane last minute schedule changes. More often than not the time of the practice has changed within the same day, or even hours before practice.
Some examples:
-Last Tuesday a practice was scheduled 5:45 pm - 9:00 pm (same time every Tuesday). At 4:50 pm she got a text message saying that practice had been moved up to 5:20. We had to seriously hustle to get her out the door earlier and by some miracle only had her late by 5 minutes. Of course she had to run as a punishment for being late. Later on we, of course, were left sitting outside in the parking lot till 9:20 - on a school/work night -waiting for them to be done.
-The night before band camp she received a text saying that they needed to be at school at 6:00 am instead of 7:00 am. No problem, Lemorris had her there in plenty of time… plenty of time to sit and wait for everyone else to get there at 7:00 am… since the time hadn't actually changed! Loved that one.
-Yesterday she was sent a text informing her that in addition to todays 5:45-9 pm practice after school, she had twirl practice from 2:45-4, then a test from 4:45 till the main practice with the band began. There was a dinner served for $2 at 4 pm, and she also needed $2 for a water bottle (though she brought 2 with her from home, and had already paid a $25 general refreshment fee). She only had a $5 bill, and gave that to the people getting water bottles, never getting her change so she couldn't get dinner. So, she will have been at school from 7am till 9 pm, with only the small lunch she packed to eat that whole time.
She's doing well at it and seems to enjoy it, yet she really hasn't made any friends and hasn't seemed to gel with the other girls. We're also concerned about her all around grades. The school she's attending is our District's version of a college prep school - it was ranked 13th in the country last year by World and News Report. It shares a campus with a regular high school, and the extracurricular activities are combined. Her work load is hard, and she's taking an extra class (7 instead of 6). We plan on first talking to her counselor, and are seriously considering pulling her out of twirl.
To anyone who's done marching band, dance line, cheer, twirl or anything like that - is this normal? Are we crazy for not being able to make this happen - it all seems so unreasonable to me. It's seriously drained our finances in a tough time, played a large part in keeping me from painting and just seems to interfere with our family on so many levels, becoming a constant source of general tension.
All my husband and I wanted was for our daughter, a junior in high school, to enjoy pursuing an extracurricular activity she had an interest in. She's very shy and this seemed like an opportunity for her to make new friends and come out of her shell a little. We were prepared to bend our schedules and adjust our budget (within reason) for this as needed. But no one informed us that we needed to have money to burn and nothing important to do with our time. Silly me thought this was something that would be accessible to the average family - most of whom are feeling the strain of a poor economy at this time.
When all is said and done we will have had to spend about $1500 over an 8 month period and given up much of our already limited spare time and gas driving our child to and from practices. $300 for band camp I understand (and we've had to stifle many giggles at the thought of it), but their trip to the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix will cost $600 each! That's on top of the various and sundry charges -an average of $75-$100 a month on everything from shorts to duffle bags. Oh, and they charge to go to the football games (though we can buy a family season pass for only $100
We've had to upgrade to a more expensive cell plan that covers a lot of texting because apparently that's how twirl communicates. Apparantly no one will actually talk to another person on a phone - or just make a schedule and stick to it (now there's an idea!).
We are told she can't miss a practice or it will count against her grade, and if she's late she gets penalized (twirl is also one of her classes). This is made especially hard with insane last minute schedule changes. More often than not the time of the practice has changed within the same day, or even hours before practice.
Some examples:
-Last Tuesday a practice was scheduled 5:45 pm - 9:00 pm (same time every Tuesday). At 4:50 pm she got a text message saying that practice had been moved up to 5:20. We had to seriously hustle to get her out the door earlier and by some miracle only had her late by 5 minutes. Of course she had to run as a punishment for being late. Later on we, of course, were left sitting outside in the parking lot till 9:20 - on a school/work night -waiting for them to be done.
-The night before band camp she received a text saying that they needed to be at school at 6:00 am instead of 7:00 am. No problem, Lemorris had her there in plenty of time… plenty of time to sit and wait for everyone else to get there at 7:00 am… since the time hadn't actually changed! Loved that one.
-Yesterday she was sent a text informing her that in addition to todays 5:45-9 pm practice after school, she had twirl practice from 2:45-4, then a test from 4:45 till the main practice with the band began. There was a dinner served for $2 at 4 pm, and she also needed $2 for a water bottle (though she brought 2 with her from home, and had already paid a $25 general refreshment fee). She only had a $5 bill, and gave that to the people getting water bottles, never getting her change so she couldn't get dinner. So, she will have been at school from 7am till 9 pm, with only the small lunch she packed to eat that whole time.
She's doing well at it and seems to enjoy it, yet she really hasn't made any friends and hasn't seemed to gel with the other girls. We're also concerned about her all around grades. The school she's attending is our District's version of a college prep school - it was ranked 13th in the country last year by World and News Report. It shares a campus with a regular high school, and the extracurricular activities are combined. Her work load is hard, and she's taking an extra class (7 instead of 6). We plan on first talking to her counselor, and are seriously considering pulling her out of twirl.
To anyone who's done marching band, dance line, cheer, twirl or anything like that - is this normal? Are we crazy for not being able to make this happen - it all seems so unreasonable to me. It's seriously drained our finances in a tough time, played a large part in keeping me from painting and just seems to interfere with our family on so many levels, becoming a constant source of general tension.
