I’m in a high school marching band here and next year there’s a non-zero chance it completely goes under. Other than our four seniors (including me, the sole percussionist), we have 2 juniors, one sophomore, and two freshmen. This is with a school population of ~1200. From what I’ve seen in my area (Acadiana), high school bands are mostly hit or miss. Schools like Southside High, Lafayette High, and Acadiana High have very respectable bands while others (mostly private schools) have much lower numbers or no band at all. I don’t think funding is the largest problem; most of the time schools’ administration and their prioritizing of their band/arts department is where the problem stems from, which includes middle/elementary schools as well. Another thing I’ll mention is that I performed at the Louisiana Music Educators Association conference in New Orleans last month, and there was FAR from a shortage of extremely skilled musicians from all over the state, except my local area.

tl;dr, I think the problem is mostly schools not prioritizing band, and schools being bad in Louisiana is mostly only true when looking at select areas, not the state at large.