I guess I'm still from the old school, but your troop needs parent participation.
No better way than to get the SM and the PL's together and set it up so when a scout goes to a BOR, at least one of his parents needs to attend, (this will give them incite as to how their boy is doing in scouting, and what is expected from him for the next BOR).
Now you have a parent at a meeting of the scouts, now is the time for the SM to really meet them, (and is a good time to feel them out as to what help they can provide for the troop as a whole).
When I was a SM and started with a completely new troop we had this all set up with the institution, committees, etc. before we even had the first scout meeting. We got to the point that when we had a BOR we had both parents of each scout that was in front of the BOR attending (along with the required CM's).
We had 28 scouts on the register with 26 active 95% of the time, and never ran out of CM's.... We were a patrol troop, they set up all activities for the month ( two months in advance), when we went on camp outs (monthly) they set up their own meals, and who was to bring what, and did the meals together switching jobs as the camp carried out.
I remember one camp out one patrol was going to have bacon and eggs for breakfast, and they got their lists mixed up, and no one brought the eggs, but they all brought bacon, so that is all they had for breakfast that time. It was a couple of months before they even thought of having bacon for breakfast again (even at home).
Chuck(This message has been edited by Wrong Number)