At our school about 90 percent participate. Upper middle class area. Public school. Does your kid have a yearbook from last year? If so take a look and count the ads. That will tell you general level of participation.
I was going to do one for my son, but we may have missed the deadline, I need to check on that. It is more expensive though. $65 for 1/4, $85 for 1/2, and $150 for a full page ad. It looks like about 1/3 of last year’s senior class had ads.
I wanted to do it, my husband and our younger daughter said, “Don’t do it.” They thought D18 would not be pleased. So, I asked her myself and she said, “Please don’t.” When I saw the 20 or so that families purchased in the yearbook, I wasn’t at all sorry about not doing it.
What I did do was to go through our photos and select many school events and tried to include each family member and close friends along with a couple of favorite teachers. I used those to make a poster size collage through Walgreens for $20. I then purchased a floating glass frame at Michaels for $10 and displayed it at her graduation party. Now that she loved!
Our D was not in ANY photos or mentioned in the yearbook her junior year of HS, the last year she was at HS. (She was absent a lot due to chronic medical conditions, for which she was and continues to receive treatment.) She was in photographs of about 6 or more friends pages the year she would have been a senior.
She was unable to purchase a yearbook and doesn’t have one from HS. (She was asked to leave her HS after JR year and understandably has mixed feelings at out the HS, though she’s maintained a lot of great friends.)
My experience was very similar to @LuckyCharms913 and @maya54. Parents could buy a 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 or full size ad. Ad’s were submitted very early - I think by mid-October. Most parents purchased the 1/8 or 1/4 size ads with very few purchasing the larger ads. And also they were not braggy at all. But rather sentimental and sweet with usually a picture from when the student was much younger. I would say the majority participated in a class of 500+ but hard to say if it was 55% or 90%.
Check the previous yearbooks, check with your kid and the kid’s friends. Sometimes a group of kids will share an ad.
We didn’t pay for an ad. They didn’t exist when I was in HS.
The kid shrugged and said he didn’t care. We didn’t buy yearbooks before (his choice) and I doubt that all or even most of the 500+ senior parents will do this. I think I’ll pass.
My D never told us. Had we known, we would have bought. The price range was reasonable. If you don’t want to do, don’t. No one would mind.
Our elementary school yearbook had lots of family ads and I did them for both my kids the year they graduated. For middle school and high school very few parents did. I put in a small ad for my business instead as I was happy to support the yearbook, but didn’t need to embarrass my kids. If you know any parents in the class ahead of you I’d ask if you can take a peak at the yearbook and see what the norm is.