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Our District has already started school talks and registered 35 Scouts and one school this week.  My Unit set up tables at two elementary schools and we got about 22 interested families in signing up for Cub Scouts.... that before the kids get to see the spiel in the classroom  I am optimistic we can get that many.

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We set up tables at our school's open house and had 28 show interest. Our join night is tonight and we're eager to see how many join. We didn't recruit at all last year, so we are hoping to beef up our Tigers as well as our Lions, and we have interest at all levels. Fingers crossed! 

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That's fantastic!  Jealous too - we aren't allowed in the schools for back to school night only parents with children enrolled b/c covid .  Also not allowed to send home fliers  - still waiting on superindendent's approval to post it on the district website - they posted the sports sign ups weeks ago....

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My big concern:

Many Packs in our area basically went inactive during COVID and now are emerging with only a handful of families left.  At the same time, we had some Packs “do their best” to keeping scouting going virtually, and they still have healthy numbers.

Council says that they need to boost the number of scouts in the struggling Packs, so they decided to redraw the recruitment boundaries.  Now, the struggling Packs are supposed to be recruiting from elementary schools that have historically been easier to recruit from and produced many new scouts, and the successful Packs are supposed to be recruiting from elementary schools that historically have been hard to recruit from.

I see where Council is coming from as they don’t want to have Packs completely dissolve.  But I just don’t want to see these struggling Packs get 30 new scouts and have 90% of them quit within three months because there is no program.  I would rather have the scouts stay interested and engaged in the a more active Pack.

Edited by Tatung42
fixed typos
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My understanding is that in the past, we had neighboring Packs all trying to recruit from the same elementary schools while at the same time totally ignoring some schools, so Council decided to intervene and tell Packs that they were only supposed to recruit from specific schools.  And now Council is changing up all the schools to try to get more numbers in the struggling Packs.

Edited by Tatung42
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Our chartered org is our primary school's PTA so we have a foot fully in the door there, which is really nice. 

Our council & district, however, has been pretty much mum about recruiting. We have a new DE and I had to call and text and email to even get flyers to put into student folders. (edited because I just remembered that what actually got it done was that I cornered him in the parking lot after the popcorn meeting.) In years past, we have had little join gifts from council, DE coming to join night, signage for the school. They've given us booklets and pamphlets to give to new families. No one even asked us when we were having join nights to try to do targeted social media marketing, which I know they've done in the past. I don't get it. 

Edited by JSL3300
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Just finished our join night and ended up with 19 new scouts! Not too shabby when you consider that our roster last year was 18 strong.  Surprisingly, it was a lot of older cubs. Our Bear den doubled, but we'll likely combine our Tigers & Wolves. Weird times. Excited for some new life breathed in! 

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1 hour ago, 5thGenTexan said:

Registered about 30.  Our Pack is approaching 80 Scouts now.  Just a few years ago we had 12 registered Scouts going into Scout Night at the school.

So, this may be the best recruitment year in the last 3 or so? Maybe there will be a post-covid, bankruptcy-pending rebound.

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On 8/26/2021 at 5:49 PM, David CO said:

Do you really believe your council has the authority to do that?

In our area, its more like a friendly agreement than a word on high. And if, as in our area, BSA as a whole only gets one opportunity to put a letter in the school newsletter/do a buzz up for one event, it makes sense to have it associated with a single pack.  Its not that the packs cannot take someone from a different school, that happens a lot, but that the advertising in the school focuses on a single unit.

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