School Dance

1. Do you have a Dance Budget?
2. How do you do it?
3. First, figure out your potential income.
   1. How Many Kids in your school – This is your potential. Now Not everyone in your school can attend. Jobs, no interest, other responsibilities all play a factor. A good goal might be 80%. If you have 1000 kids in your school you should have a potential number of 800. If you 400 kids in your school than 320 is your potential. If you get more than that, Bonus!
   2. Take your biggest and most well attended dance of the year. Compare the attendance of that dance to the total number in your school. This number doesn’t include kids that attend from other schools.
   3. Once you have the potential attendance, play with the numbers.
4. List your expenses
   1. Cost of the DJ
   2. Cost of the Decorations
   3. Cost of the Refreshments
   4. Cost of the Venue/Location
   5. Cost to Advertise
   6. Photographer
   7. What amount of profit do you want to make

2. Keep in Mind when you are figuring your Budget
   1. Decorations should be focused on the Entrance
   2. Refreshments – Breath Mints and Water
   3. Photographer – Should be a separate cost
   4. Venue – School location. I often hear kids say that: “everyone wants the dance to be somewhere other than the school”! Well what that says is that the experience at the school is not good enough! Check out our post on Improving the experience.
   5. The DJ – Is responsible for a good share of the experience.

• Question: With your list of expenses, what does each expense contribute to the success of the party? Some better ways to ask this question…

1. What do kids complain about?
2. Why would kids leave early?
3. If your DJ doesn’t show up, will the decorations be enough to save the party?
4. If there is no music will people stick around for 3 hours to enjoy the decorations, breath mints and water?
5. Do people leave early because the decorations are bad?

• While these questions seem obvious, typically school traditions say spend most of your budget on decorations. However, when the dance starts, please turn off the lights! Often times decorations cannot be seen with the lights off.

1. So, the question still stands… What percentage of your expense list contributes to the success of the party?
   1. DJ – Responsible for 80% of the success!
      • What do we do with the other 20%?
   2. Decorations
   3. Refreshments
   4. Venue/Location
   5. Advertise
   6. Photographer
   7. Profit

• Which part of the experience are you spending your budget on?

3. Play with the numbers – Example
   5. Let say you have 300 kids show up to your Dance X 5.00 per person = $1500. 80% of 1500 = $1200. If 80% of the outcome of your dances is the DJs Responsibility. If your attendance is 100 X 5.00 = $500. When you start calling around to DJs to find out prices and $500 is the cheapest you can find than raising your fee to get in is the next best option. Remember if you cut the experience you cut the attendance. Let’s say that 50 kids don’t come because the music experience is bad. 50 X 5.00 = $250. In some cases that might be the extra amount needed to pay for the DJ anyway.
   6. The 80% of your budget is a suggestion. You might be able to have a great experience spending 50% of your budget on the DJ. This might be some trial and error. If you can spend 50% of your budget on the DJ and have an incredible experience – Awesome!
   7. Now, let’s say you achieve your goal of getting 80% of your student body to attend – play with the numbers…
   8. What if you raise your price 1 or 2 or 5 dollars, could that make a difference? See our post on Experience.
4. Being consistent with your budget is key to the success of your dances. Now Kids might say well we don’t know the numbers?
   1. This could take some work. Looking at the history, making sure that you keep track during the year. Have a spread sheet that keeps track. Keep track of your students as well as kids from other schools. Kids from other schools can’t be included with your budget, this would be the hoped for bonus. If the experience is good, the bonus will come. The numbers are key for decision making and success.

1. What ever you call it, inappropriate dancing can be an issue. If you are looking for some answers the following could be of assistance…
2. Decide what is appropriate…
   1. You have to decided before hand what is appropriate or not. For admin, keep in mind just because you danced differently in high school doesn’t mean that kids now days don’t know how. Dancing is an expression. Everyone is different. If jumping up and down is the way they like to express their excitement, as long as it is in control and no one gets hurt it shouldn’t be against the rules.
   2. While this could be a question of values and or beliefs on what is morally wrong or right, it’s more about liability on the school. If there is a rule in the school about Public Displays of Affection (PDA), this rule should be carried over to the dances as well. If dirty dancing crosses the line according to the rule of the school then it needs to be enforced.
3. Music:
   1. Keep music clean
   2. BPM (Beats Per Minute) how slow or fast a song is. Slower bpm music from the 70 to 100 bpm’s seems to encourage dirty dancing behavior more than other bpm ranges. With that said, kids that want to dirty dance, will dirty dance to whatever the music is. While some songs will encourage it more than others, kids that want to dance that way will do it regardless of the style of music. This doesn’t mean cut out all music that is within that range, it does mean that there needs to be a good mix of all music from all bpm ranges. Interaction and participation songs keep dancers from getting into a pattern of one kind of dancing. There is many ways to do this and a professional experienced DJ will know the mix to play to cover all bpm ranges without getting into a pattern.
   3. High Energy Rock songs or songs with drops encourage pushing and shoving. While jumping up and down may have some contact, it is far from actual mosh pit.
   4. Crowd Surfing and sitting on another persons shoulders may not seem like a big deal especially to kids wanting the do it. Most injuries have been caused by this. This has little to do with the kinds of music played. Maybe it is a challenge or it just seems like it would be fun to do. Regardless, you need to decided what is allowed and enforce it.
   5. You could be held liable for injuries even if the student was involved by choice!
4. Starts at the door where you pay
   1. Kids need to know the rules before they enter the dance.
   2. Rules posted.
   3. Kids cannot come in intoxicated (call parents if they are)
   4. Immodest clothing promotes. This is something that needs to be decided by you of what is allowed. If a guy takes his shirt off in the middle of the dance doesn’t necessarily mean he is hot.
   5. Resource officer should be present
   6. Kids sign a paper with phone number stating they understand the rules. This is the warning, during the dance they are asked to leave with a phone call to parents so they know that they are not at the dance anymore! This is crucial so you release the liability.
   7. Don’t be afraid to send kids home if they don’t listen. This is extreme however, the next dance they believe you.
5. Dance attendance?
   1. Attendance may go down at first. It could take a year until the problems cycle out. I have found with the schools that were proactive, attendance actually went up over time.  At first you may lose some kids, over time they will come back and even more that stopped coming because of the PDA.
   2. Demand respect.
6. Other guidelines
   1. The DJ is not responsible to punish or make announcements concerning dirty dancing or to send kids home. This needs to be done by an administrator!
   2. Admin need to walk the floor including in the dance area.
   3. Chaperones are worthless when correcting behavior. Their job is to watch exits, report problems etc.
   4. Use a stage for the DJ so that you can see into the middle of the dance area.
   5. The DJ also needs to understand the rules. If he/she breaks the rules set by the school. Perhaps you need to look elsewhere?
   6. Keep DJ’s out of corners of the room. This creates a bottleneck.
   7. If you have a large student body bring larger systems in or more speakers spread out. Again this spreads the crowd out.
   8. If the problem is with one group of students, invited their parents to come over to spectate!
   9. Must be consistent every dance until the kids learn and keep the rules.
7. While this may seem like a lot of work, it does pay off! Many schools that have followed these guidelines have had success. Admin and teachers had to be a little more proactive for a time, but it paid off. The answer isn’t to stop having dances because you don’t want to deal with it, it’s being proactive and getting evolved with the students. it is a great way to teach respect. It will increase pride for the school. It gives direction. We need that to be taught.

Please contact us if you have any further questions.