This article spells out various expenses high school students are expected to swallow for the class trip, the class ring, the class picture, the yearbook, the prom, and what-have-you. When I was in high school (and dinosaurs roamed the earth), there were many of those things too, but they were regarded as strictly optional. Perhaps after only 17 couples attended our prom, they reconsidered.
In my school (and every city school in which I've worked), there's something called "senior dues" which cover graduation, a yearbook, a gown, a school shirt, and I'm not sure what else.
I've always found it bothersome that kids needed to pay to graduate from a public school. I find that unreasonable. We ought to make the yearbook and all the other nonsense available to kids who want it, but we shouldn't be shoving it down their throats.
Or maybe I'm just cranky. I can tell you, though, receiving a bill from a public school for several hundred bucks won't make me any less cranky. And many parents of my students are far less-equipped to shell it out than I am.
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