Recruiting

[msnowman]

We had our sign up night last night and I consider it a sucess, though sucess may be in the eyes of the beholder.

 

We got 1 new Bear (Bringing our total number of Bears to 1), 1 new Wolf (for a total of 4) and 3 new parents. These are in addition to our 5 Tigers and 1 Web II that we already have.

 

I know, it doesn't seem like great numbers, but the truth of the matter is out of a first grade with just 7 boys in it we have 4 (the other goes to another school). The second grade has six boys, so we have half of those and the third grade has 4 boys (so we landed a quarter). The 4th grade has 3 boys (we have none of those) and the Fifth grade has 5 boys (we have none of those either, our Web II is in another school).

 

Also, given the fact that for the last two years we had Zero Wolves and last year had Zero Bears, I feel this is a step forward.

 

How did your Pack do?

 

Michelle

CM - P102

DL - P102

(New Motto - "We'll make it work")

 

[Torveaux]

Our Pack is small too. (not quite as small as yours) We also are associated with a small school, so our potential is limited to a max of about 10-20 boys per grade if we got 100%. We generally get 25-50% of them early on and keep 10-25% through Webelos.

 

We just had our recruiting meeting/1st Pack meeting and we had some new families and a home-schooling family from the Parish.

 

I guess if our school was as small as yours I would look into making Scouting part of the curriculum (of sorts). At our school the Brownies get almost 100% participation because they hold their meetings almost exclusively during school hours (lunch/recess once a month). Our Principal really supports the boys being Cubs because the data shows that Cubs are better students and better behaved (at least at our school) than the average student. The Cub program also shares elements with the curriculum anyway (citizenship and such) so it augments what the teachers are teaching.

 

Good luck!

[OneHour]

As posted in the Open Discussion thread, our pack did okay. We took in 32 boys which brings our pack size to 98. We average about 40 per year.

It seems that CubmasterJerry indicated that his pack took a boat load. I'll let him detail that.

 

1Hour

 

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Torveaux writes:

I guess if our school was as small as yours I would look into making Scouting part of the curriculum (of sorts). At our school the Brownies get almost 100% participation because they hold their meetings almost exclusively during school hours (lunch/recess once a month).

 

Only make scouting part of a public school curriculum if you like being on the losing end of a lawsuit; it really isn't that hard to understand that 1) all BSA packs have to practice religious discrimination by excluding atheists, and 2) that means it can't be part of the public school's curriculum.

[Torveaux]

Public schools are not normally that small.

 

We are talking about a private school wherein children actually learn right from wrong and do not grow up with such a poor understanding of the Constitution.

 

 

[msnowman]

Our School is a very small K-8 public school that went from about 200 students last fall to 170 this fall....and most of those, in all 9 grades are girls.

 

On the bright side, there are 6 boys in this year's Kindergarten class, so that's 6 potential Tigers to sign up next spring.

 

Michelle

[mbscoutmom]

We expected to do better than last year, when we got 1 Tiger and a couple of Webelos II who didn't last. But we didn't expect what we have gained at School Night and in the two weeks since: 8 Tigers, 2 Wolves, 3 Bears, 3 Webelos I, and 2 Webelos II. Some of these came over from another pack that folded, a few transferred from other packs they weren't happy with, some of them go to our church and read our notice in the bulletin, and the rest go to the parish school. We had 17 active scouts before, lost one who transferred to another pack, and gained 18, so we more than doubled our pack size.

 

Why did we gain so many more than last year? Mainly, I think it was our presence at the school's open house: we had a display and handed out fliers. We didn't do it last year, but did the year before, and had a large group of new recruits that year as well. I realize that you can't do that in public schools, but it seems to work great for us.

 

The best news, though, is that we signed up 11 new leaders, more than doubling our total number of leaders, too! I just hope we can keep them all. I'm trying my best to plan a fun program and keep everything organized, but this is a bigger challenge than I had expected when I took over as CC.

 

[cc329]

Congrats on your success ms! If we could all say we recruited 50% of the students we'd be thrilled!

 

Whoa...I must be really sheltered! I've been a scout leader now for 5 years and I never realized we had to exclude atheists! Granted, not being able to preform the religious requirements sure hurts your chances of being an Eagle Scout, but at the Cub Scout level, the religious medals are optional. There are several other requirements for each award you can do instead of the religiously based ones.

[OneHour]

cc329 ... be careful ... don't fall into the bait or is that debate? Just don't go there. If you want to read his and everyone else's 2 cents on the subject, check out the Issues and Politics.

 

Let's keep this subject to cub scouts, Merlyn.

 

cc329 ... welcome, by the way.

[Cubmaster Jerry]

Sounds to me like you did quite well considering the pool from which you recruit from. Congrats!

 

How did my Pack do? As you may have seen in one of my other posts, my Pack's problems isn't so much recruitment as it is retention.

 

Here's to another great Scouting year for all of us! I wish you well.

 

Jerry

 

[Torveaux]

cc329,

 

The Webelos religious requirement is, well, a requirement.