The days of a $5 prom in the high school gym and a class picnic in Rock Creek Park have given way to fancier expectations for the class of 2010 — and depleted bank accounts for their parents.
Washington-area families often pitch in thousands of dollars to cover prom, limos, school parking fees, senior dues, graduation costs, senior portraits, extracurricular activities, college visits, college applications, Advanced Placement tests, International Baccalaureate tests, the SAT, the ACT and more. And as the dollars add up, so does the oft-heard phrase, “But Mom, it’s my senior year!”
“Back in the dark ages when I graduated, we didn’t take limos to prom,” said Montgomery County school board President Pat O’Neill. “The ante has been upped.”
At the same time, districts are struggling to reduce overall budgets by millions of dollars, meaning some of the burden ends up on upperclassmen in the form of higher fees. Fairfax County proposed an athletic fee next year of $100 per student per sport, and $200 parking permits, up from $150. Montgomery County is considering saving $1 million by cutting stipends for extracurricular activities, likely leading to higher fees.
Tim Hwang, a senior at Montgomery County’sThomas Wootton High School, paid $1,300 for more than a dozen AP tests this year in an effort to earn college credit for courses taken in high school. The increasingly popular exams cost $86 each, up from $82 several years ago.
And the better students perform on the exams, the more likely they are to be courted by colleges — leading to the added expenses of overnight visits and applications averaging about $45 each.
A sampling of senior year expenses from around the region:
Prom tickets: $65 (Wilson H.S., D.C.)
Prom dress: $50 and up
Prom tuxedo rental: $90
After-prom school-sponsored party: $35 (Wilson H.S., D.C.)
Senior dues: $50 (Washington-Lee H.S., Arlington)
AP tests: $86 each
IB courses: $75 each (Fairfax)
Flight to Boston to visit Boston University: $150
Flight to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit Stanford University: $340
Graduation cap and gown: $50 (Bethesda-Chevy Chase H.S., Montgomery)
Graduation dues plus yearbook, announcements and senior picnic: $140 (Northwood H.S., Montgomery)
Post-graduation all-night party: $55 (Lake Braddock Secondary School, Fairfax)
College application fee: $55 (University of Maryland, College Park)
Senior portraits: $300 to $400 (Freed Photography, Bethesda)
Class ring: $470 (Josten’s)
Catered graduation open house, no alcohol: $10 to $15 per person (Maison Culinaire catering, Reston)
“I love my son, but oh my goodness,” said Wanda Tanks-Gregory, the parent of a senior at Chantilly High School in Fairfax County. “College visits — I must’ve accrued about two to three grand. … And don’t forget that once you’re accepted, the school wants a certain amount of money to hold the spot, and $500 to hold housing — and that’s all before financial aid kicks in.” Tanks-Gregory was hit with some unexpected senior-year costs, too — an unreturned textbook, a calculator lost as a sophomore and unspecified senior dues of $55. “A lot of the time, you don’t find out until the day the child is supposed to graduate what these charges are,” she said. Christalyn Solomon, a junior at Fairfax’s Mount Vernon High School, brought her concerns before the school board in anticipation of a senior year out of her price range. Athletics alone will cost $750, Solomon said, after three sports multiplied by $100, plus “spirit packs” at $150 each to pay for sweatshirts with mascots and socks with logos. And though schools will reduce fees for the lowest-income families, Solomon worried about those in the middle, hurting from the recession. The costs of senior functions — a class trip to Kings Dominion, a graduation cap and gown, the post-graduation all-night party — tack on at least $100 more, at the same time families are planning graduation open houses and passing out dozens of pricey senior portraits. “Who will be the voice for the working-class poor?” Solomon said. “We don’t qualify for free or reduced lunch. And I am sure there are many other families who fall into this category — students who will now no longer be able to enjoy life as a typical FCPS student.” Fairfax County School Board member Jane Strauss sympathized with seniors, but said that the district’s top priority must be classroom education — not sports, not graduation expenses, not parking fees. “Children are expensive no matter what, and we are all having to reprioritize what we spend our money on,” Strauss said. “But from the standpoint of the school division, I have to keep my eye on the long term.”
