TonyH

Last Night, 5 packs at the school fighting for boys. We got 1. Every pack I know is going to more schools than they have in the past, because numbers are way down. I've already told my DE, that he needs to prepare for packs to be closing and/or consolidating over the next 2 years, if recruiting continues in the same direction.

For all the talk of BSA units being Chartered, owned and operated by the church they meet at, It sure gets a big reaction when someone proposes to build a scouting group that is actually an integrated part of the church they meet at.

Second school roundup night for us so far. 6 packs showed up - 5 new families showed up. In previous years, this school got 50+ Boys... and we were down to 5. 1-2 more years of this, and we will be shutting down many of the packs in the area.

Starts first of October for us. So far, I'm not very optomistic at all. The ONLY store to allow Packs and Troops to set up a show and sell is Lowes Hardware. Sure, there's 3 in the county, but by the time you divide that among all the packs and troops, each unit might get 1 day to sell.

I would add, Training is critical - For the Den Leader too. A Den Leader should sit through the Den Chief training, to understand how to use this new person during den meetings the right way. I'd place them in Webelos dens first, but If I had enough, I think every den could use one.

Here, our Schools and Packs kind of overlap with one another, so most packs recruit from multiple schools, and most schools send boys to various packs. Last year, the schools took out the ability for the DE to do boy talks to the classes during the day, and it dropped recruiting a lot. At least 50%, and in some schools up to 90% lower. This year, some of the schools have allowed us to do boy talks again, but not all. We had really low numbers for the first school we went to for roundups... But It's a small, low income school that traditionally has had really low participation in scouting anyway. 6 more schools to go for us - probably another 18 in the district overall to go.