Did the other school have a band, cheerleaders, and dance team? Sounds like those groups add a fair amount to the number of parents involved.
Upthread someone said it was a game in working hours, was that the case? Fotball games were mostly Friday night events in my home town.
Yeah, I agree, part of me was even saying, why click on this thread anyway, by that I mean recognizing my own judgmental nature and how much I (like others) like to criticize. Too much negativity is bad and any sort of negativity should be watched pretty closely. Too much arguing going on already…
How big is the team? I’m thinking not more than 25.
well… i read this comment above
“19 people likely constituted 75% of the live-in parents of the players of the other team. Asking other people to show to a HS football game that their kid isn’t even playing in is baffling.”
I think that comment and your comment make a lot of sense, though, I didn’t think that until I read that 19 people was probably 75% of the parents that had kids in the game. I still think that more parents should of showed up but I have to admit it’s not as bad as I was saying it was before.
I live in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood a couple of blocks from what would be considered the “hood” in Milwaukee. And I believe that, in broad generalizations, low-income parents ARE less interested in their kids school life. If I just drive around the neighborhood to the north of me during working hours on a weekday, you would be simply aghast at the number of school-age kids just hanging out in their yards, on the front porches, on the sidewalks, and just wandering the neighborhood. I’m not talking about a couple here and there, I’m talking about kids outside of probably every other house in the neighborhood. More often than not, the parents (other other adults) are with them just hanging out doing nothing. And this isn’t just during school off days either, it literally is every single day of the school year. If the parents don’t even care enough to make sure they go to school, I can’t imagine they would be interested at all in what goes on at school.
One of players on my volleyball team teaches at a Milwaukee Public School in a low-income part of town and has a theoretical class size of 28 students (theoretical, because she says she’s never, ever had every single student there on a single day). They just had the first parent-teacher conference of the new school year, and how many parents showed up - after school and working hours, mind you? 4. 4 parents out of 28. If that isn’t a lack of interest in their kids schooling, what is?
Granted, we are talking about Milwaukee Public Schools, which has a habitual truancy rate of 60%. No, I didn’t miss a decimal point there…sixty percent of students are habitually truant! And their graduation rate is about the same percentage as well.
It’s sports. Who cares? Not lower-income parents, especially ones that don’t even have a kid on the team! In my experience, lower income parents are often more like “Play sports if you must, but don’t you dare let it interfere with your education and your ticket out of this place.”
I mean, I don’t even comprehend why 5 or 600 of the parents went to your away game. Seriously? That’s crazy shit. Do you go when there is a debate, or a spelling bee, or something educational your school is involved in? Or just sports?
I wasn’t exactly from a low income family but I do come from working parents. My mom was a nurse but my dad worked menial jobs all his life. When I had a science fair, or a parent-teacher conference, my mom did whatever she had to to rearrange her schedule.
Sports? I ran track and I never expected her to come to any of my meets. Why? It just wasn’t important enough for her to reschedule her entire day.
Where? Some recent immigrant groups might but not the multi-generational white, black, or latino poor. That is one of the reasons they stay that way for so long. I grew up in a very poor area and my parents and grandparents all taught some of the poorest of the poor. Don’t generalize from a few success stories that all the poor values education even nearly the same let alone more than middle-class and above people. They don’t as a general rule and many will be proud to tell you that themselves.
Just as an expansion on the question:
It’s been mentioned that in Texas the local HS football games are community events. I can’t speak for Texas, but I lived in a small town in Ohio for a few years. The folks there didn’t move around too much. Most people had lived there all their lives, as had their parents and grandparents.
There was ONE high school in the town. That made it the Our Town High School. Everyone knew everyone from school. If you went to a HS football game there, first you’d be going to your own alma mater and second you’d get a chance to chat with a lot of folks that you knew, but maybe didn’t interact with often any more. Maybe your kid wasn’t playing, but you’d know the parents of the kids who were.
My kids, on the other hand, didn’t go to HS within 600 miles of where I went to HS. They were in a small enough town that if they went to back to a game, they might recognize a few people. If I went back to one of mine, odds are really against me knowing anybody. Once you know everyone in the stands, things are a little different.
I know. 
There are a lot of places like that, but that’s not the same as hundreds of people traveling to away games.
Perhaps I really don’t. That’s why I’m posting the question here. I fully realize they have fewer options, but the difference in participation was much larger than I would have expected. My main question is whether this is typical.
Yes. I offered the contrasting info of “our” school mainly as a data point for non-Texans. High school football is extremely popular here. (see below)
It’s the norm, as far as my experience goes. I would estimate around half of the attendees from our school had a child in at least one of the performances (drill team, cheer, band. football). Judging from the size of the relevant groups on the other team, that would still work out to 75-100 parents with a child directly involved in the game somehow. And you’re right; It’s almost a religion here. 
In Texas? You’ve got to be kidding. I doubt if any other than parents of the debaters show to those events (I know, I’m one of them). But please see my answer directly above. Even limiting it to the parents of the performers doesn’t explain a turnout that low.
It was a Friday night game, kickoff at 7:30. My bewilderment (again, see above) is that there were almost no parents there to watch their own kids. My question again is: “Is this typical?” The teacher I talked to claims it is. I had heard that parental participation in low income areas was bad. But I was surprised it was **this **bad.
Again, broad estimates here: roughly 40 dressed out for football, a dozen or so cheerleaders, no drill team that I recall (I was down on the field moving equipment during half time), and maybe 60-65 in the band.
Again (to everyone) I’m here asking because I’m curious. There are a variety of reasons for not attending a football game on Friday night, and I’m not claiming attendance is a pre-requisite for quality parenting. I’m just shocked at how low the numbers were in this instance. Given the supposed problems of parents in those areas (work, childcare, plain old exhaustion, and even the 8 bucks apiece to get in), I wouldn’t have been surprised at a turnout of only 50% of the other areas. But 2%? You’ve got to admit, that’s surprising.
Wait, you pay $8 to watch a high school football game?
As I said, fascinating.
50% did show up. 50% of the live-in parents of the football team (I had assumed a team size of 25 for my 75% estimate). Expecting anyone else to come is lunacy.
You’re missing lack of interest in your list. You’re not surprised by the lack of interest in a debate event but you are because it’s football. From someone outside the US that’s the weird part.
What do you mean by “participation,” exactly? Does it just mean participation in high school football or are you extrapolating that to participation in other things?
No, I don’t admit that.
And I can buy that it might have been a surprise to you at the time, but is it still a surprise? Have none of the comments in this thread thrown some light on the matter?
What if somebody said that there were parents to whom participation in football was no more important than participation in debating? Or to whom participation in debating was far more important than participation in football? Is that something you can get your mind around?
I would be shocked and saddened by that as well. Extracurricular events are opportunities for family members and friends to show support to kids, and to bond. Not that much different from family reunions and birthday parties. It’s fun family time.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Maybe they’re figuring that on a weekday, kids should be IN CLASS, not playing games out of town.
ETA: later on in the thread, this game occurring outside school hours was clarified.
It sounds strange but it is more common that you think. Cheerleading is a competitive sport in some places and even has national tournaments. It is like a combination of team dancing and gymnastics. The people that I know that were heavily involved with it didn’t like to cheer for other sports teams either. There are competitive cheerleading squads that don’t cheer at any games.
Yeah, I’ll give you the away game thing. At least, the folks in the town I was in wouldn’t have travelled to an away game that they had no relatives in.
It’s looking like there are two answers to the OP. One is that a lot of the parents in low income areas do not support anything school related. The other is that the ones that do support their kids’ education and development often don’t travel to away football games, even if their kid is playing.
The following is an anecdote mildly related to HS football support that this thread just happened to dislodge from my memory.
When I was a freshman in HS (10th grade), our football team went to the State Playoffs. But that was because two of the best teams in our league had gotten disqualified for having players who lived outside of their attendance areas. For the next two years the team was mostly trying not to be the second to the last team in the league.
They weren’t trying not to be last. There was one team that was always last. They hadn’t won a game in years. We’ll call them the Lasters. They were from a low income area. They had cheerleaders, but no band or drill team. The stands were usually a bit empty.
I was there the day that the Lasters won. I didn’t personally know anyone on our team, so for me it was almost worth losing just to see people being that happy. They ran, they jumped, they hugged, they threw helmets. From half-way up the bleachers, I could see the tears. Because they had won ONE football game.
The next year, their marching band was featured on the Carol Burnett Show. Apparently for years they’d had a nationally rated marching band. A band that was so good it got paid to perform, although being on national TV was reaching new heights. A band that was too good to go to away games for a losing football team. Now that is a lack of support.
Not really. If you have 40 football players, 12 cheerleaders and 60 band members, that’s 112 kids. Maybe 15% of the kids would have 1 parents attend.
I just checked the HS nearest me. Their football field seats 5000. And this is Tennessee, not Texas. Presumably they wouldn’t’ve built such a large stadium if they weren’t drawing the crowds. I wouldn’t know - I didn’t go to football games even when I was in HS.
StG