The Back to School Dance always pulls a crowd, but this year three out of every five students attended the dance. As slightly over 1,000 people paid $10 per ticket, it was one of the biggest events of the year.
The dance raised $9,960 from ticket sales, which significantly surpassed its expenses.
“The Back to School Dance is really cheap to put on,” said Geneva Gondak, ASB treasurer. “All we pay for is the DJ and security.”
The dance cost $2,250 to stage, of which $1,295 went to the DJ, $695 to the four police stationed as security, and $259 to the lights and equipment.
According to budget secretary Margret Catelli, the $7,711 profit that remained after all the expenses were paid went into the ASB budget for future use.
“The profits are used to pay for student activities,” Catelli said. “It might be used to pay for water or security for the dances, or anything student-related.”
One of those activities is Prom, which annually costs over $50,000 to put on.
Last year the dance cost $55,000, and was supplemented by $10,000 granted from the ASB budget.
“I believe that ASB likes to start the Prom off with a certain amount of money, around $10,000,” Catelli said. “That comes from the Right Stuff packages and also the ASB operations account. They give money to the Prom account, and they give money to the senior account for frolic. They redistribute it.”
This year’s senior class has less money than both the last year’s senior class and the junior class.
While this year’s seniors currently have $5,885, the juniors have more than $6,000 sitting in their account.
“Because [the juniors] started doing the Morp fundraiser and other bigger events, our class already has a lot of money, more than the seniors have,” Gondak said.
This is partially because this year’s senior class received very little money from the class auction they had last year. The profit from the auction was spent on that year’s Prom instead.
“They did get the short end of the stick for that fundraiser,” Gondak said.
However, Gondak said that the seniors already paid some of their Prom deposits and have funds in a separate Prom account, so the balance numbers are somewhat misleading.
“That account has $5,000 now, but it had $15,000 before because they already paid for their venue,” Gondak said. “At the end of each prom a certain amount of money comes in from ticket sales, and of that profit there’s $10,000 set aside for a start-up fund. That money was put into this year’s Prom account, so thats what they had to make their deposits.”
The prom account currently stands at $5,455, post deposit, and will likely be used as rollover for next year’s budget. ASB mandates that a certain amount of the Prom budget is saved to be used for the next year’s Prom, so that the future classes can make pre-dance deposits.
“When they establish the ticket prices they factor in how much they need for rollover and how much they need for frolic,” Gondak said. “Last year that class had fundraised a good amount of money, that’s why prom tickets go up and down.”
