marching bands in the state and country. Right now, our HS marching band is ranked 3rd in the country, yes there are fees to play in the marching band. Most bands have enough $$ that if a kid wants to play but family can't afford it, they will not charge the kid. That does change for extra trips, like our band is marching in the Macys Day Parade next week, and that kid would have had to come up with that cost on his own.

In fact, for all the travel and competitions our fees are super low. I know some of the other local bands have fees much higher and ours was getting push back to what we charge. It is under $500, which is a steal if people really knew.

Our band owns 2 semi-trailers that they take to every away football game, every competition, etc. They rent the 2 semi cabs for the season, and they also have 1 small trailer that they own. They did just vote where they are supposed to get 2 box trucks per school in our district. It isn't specifically for the band but for sure the band will be using them the most.

One good thing is for state finals which is in San Antonio so a good drive for our school, the district pays all the expenses if your band makes the state competition. This year 3 of 4 HS made the state competition, pretty normal for our district.

The amount of $$ that is spent on props, meals, buses, etc. is crazy for sure. The band does have 350+ kids in it each year, you can just guess the cost for busses, food, etc. For football games as they use school busses, we usually take 13 busses. For the trip to San Antonio, we rent charter busses and only have 8, I think.

At the BOA Regional in San Antonio the Saturday before state competition the top 3 bands were the bands from our district. Pretty rare to have 3 HS with that good of a band program.