How to handle too many girls for a Girl Scout troop?

[Anonymous]

We are at a Title 1 school that is starting its first Girl Scout troops (Daisies, Brownies). The moms who are organizing the troops are higher SES, but we also want to put out flyers to invite any girl to participate. The problem is that it's looking like we will end up with way too many girls. (Seems like 15 is the maximum size for a troop.)

How do regular (non-Title 1) schools) that have a tradition of Girl Scouts deal with this? If you have too many girls for a single troop, do you start more than one troop at the same school?

[Anonymous]

We just had 3 leaders (1 leader and two co-leaders). We included every girl in the grade at a small private.

[Anonymous]

Part of the size limit is not just the ability to manage that number, but making it a group that's of a size that allows the girls to bond and develop meaningful relationships.

Not Girl Scouts, but I was a Girls on the Run coach at a school where it was very popular. Max size of a GOTR team is 20. When registration hit 23 for the first time one season, we broke it into two teams with two coaches.

[Anonymous]

I am a leader of 2nd grade Brownies but we started with Kindergarten Daisies. With 2 leaders 15 is definitely a maximum for manageability. At our school we have a GS school coordinator who helps organize troops. Enrollment is generally first come first served. When a troop is full a waitlist is started and the troop coordinator tries to encourage parents to be leaders of new troops. When we were first forming and there were about 25 girls interested, two troops were formed right from the get-go.

We used to have 16 in our troop, now we have twelve and we capped our troop at 12. It is so much more manageable and the girls that stuck with it are very enthusiastic and their parents help out. I know you don't want to leave any girls out but you also want to make it a meaningful experience for the girls in the troop.

[Anonymous]

Start two troops now or if that's not possible, cap the first low so you don't end up with most but not all girls in. Leave enough girls for a second troop.

[Anonymous]

Yes, we are at a non title one school and they just started two or three different Daisy troupes in kindergarten, each with two or more parent leaders. You really mean get have a hard time with a 20 girl troupe -- that is a LOT of giggly little girls who each want to talk to gat enough done to earn a "petal" for their vests in an hour. Start two or more troupes, as others are advising.

[Anonymous]

Call the council. They my have a list of volunteers who would like to lead or help including retirees and students. Also there may be senior gs who can help.

[Anonymous]

Do 2 troops. 10 is a great number for a troop. They --the SUM-- will try to bully you into to taking "just one more" and then "just one more" and then "just one more".

I felt like I was the mother to all the girls in my troop when they were with me. I was responsible for their safety and enjoyment. I had to know who was allergic to what and who has issues with X, Y, or Z. I had to know all the rules for whatever we were doing (council rules)... it just gets too chaotic to be heard (as the leader) or to give the girls a chance to have their voices/opinions heard if there are more than 10-12.

It was important to be to have the girls feel like they had a voice and that it would be heard in discussions. It was important to me to be comfortable knowing each one and managing the whole group without being totally and completely overwhelmed. Set your limits. Some people can manage 20 and do fine. Most people probably cannot. If you take on more than you can handle, you will start making decisions to minimize your pain rather than to maximize the girls' experiences. We had a great time as brownies and juniors -- went lots of places -- but if we had more girls, it would have seemed like more work to get everyone in or manage the carpools or whatever. 10 was great with brownies. 12 was good for juniors.

Start two troops. This is the time when parents are most willing to lead a troop=-= when the girls are little. Trust me, it gets harder to find anyone to help as they get older b/c leading isn't all about lessons on friendship, crafts and pouring the cool-aid. As the girls get older, you as a leader have to start learning more so that you can lead/plan more. Those leaders who don't grow with the girls have half-@ss programs that end up boring the girls.

Now is the time to capitalize on the interest and enthusiasm of the parents. Tell them there is one troop and the first 10 girls will be in it. They need to come up with 2 more leaders for the second troop and the next 10 girls will be in that troop. Maybe you can join forces with the other leaders at times to do joint activities. But, it is in your best interest and the girls' (imo) to have a troop of 10.

(Also, when it comes to selling cookies, larger troops are at a disadvantage b/c they get the same number of booth slots as smaller troops. )

[Anonymous]

Multiple troops.

Limit troop size to 12 and make sure there are 2 adults at all times, 3 is best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
We are at a Title 1 school that is starting its first Girl Scout troops (Daisies, Brownies). The moms who are organizing the troops are higher SES, but we also want to put out flyers to invite any girl to participate. The problem is that it's looking like we will end up with way too many girls. (Seems like 15 is the maximum size for a troop.)

How do regular (non-Title 1) schools) that have a tradition of Girl Scouts deal with this? If you have too many girls for a single troop, do you start more than one troop at the same school?

Daughter was in scouts at large school - they never split up the troops. I've never heard of that - splitting them up seems like an awful idea
for a school based troop. Even when I was a kid it was one big troop. Do you want kids to need therapy because of the Girl Scouts? Probably not.
We had meetings at schools.

[Anonymous]

If you move it off site or to a weekend (also known as "this is not aftercare") you will have less girls and more family commitment.

[Anonymous]

I think you can actually have more than 15.

We just started up a daisy troop, and we had a TON of initial interest, and ended up with 16 girls. Some of the initially interested people disappeared after their initial interest, when they realized that it was a commitment, or when the meeting time we chose didn't work for them.

16 is a lot of girls but we make it work. We have two leaders (I'm one), and we require at least two other parents to stay for each meeting, so we can split the girls up into groups of 4 for various activities. Not every girl can make every meeting, which helps somewhat. And there are usually some moms who are doing this in part to make friends with other moms - those are often the moms who can be relied on to stay and help with meetings!

If you're looking at more than 16 girls, definitely split up into two troops. We also limited our troop size by only allowing 1st graders to join. We had some interested K parents, but those girls wouldn't have been able to move on to brownies with us next year and would have been left behind. So I put those parents in touch with the mom who is launching the K daisies troop later this year, and we got two girls off our roster that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
We are at a Title 1 school that is starting its first Girl Scout troops (Daisies, Brownies). The moms who are organizing the troops are higher SES, but we also want to put out flyers to invite any girl to participate. The problem is that it's looking like we will end up with way too many girls. (Seems like 15 is the maximum size for a troop.)

How do regular (non-Title 1) schools) that have a tradition of Girl Scouts deal with this? If you have too many girls for a single troop, do you start more than one troop at the same school?

I'm sorry I don't have any advice, but I urge you to find a way to make it work. This is likely the only opportunity some of these girls will ever have for this type of activity.

[Anonymous]

We have 2-3 troops per grade K-5 at our public school . The 6th grade troops this year all combined into one troop since there were a lot of drop outs by that age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We are at a Title 1 school that is starting its first Girl Scout troops (Daisies, Brownies). The moms who are organizing the troops are higher SES, but we also want to put out flyers to invite any girl to participate. The problem is that it's looking like we will end up with way too many girls. (Seems like 15 is the maximum size for a troop.)

How do regular (non-Title 1) schools) that have a tradition of Girl Scouts deal with this? If you have too many girls for a single troop, do you start more than one troop at the same school?

Daughter was in scouts at large school - they never split up the troops. I've never heard of that - splitting them up seems like an awful idea
for a school based troop. Even when I was a kid it was one big troop. Do you want kids to need therapy because of the Girl Scouts? Probably not.
We had meetings at schools.

My kid's kindergarten and first grade class had two separate troops instead of one big one and the girls love it. You are making a big deal out of nothing. I really think any girl would enjoy a 10 girl troop far better than a 20 girl troop because she'd have a better chance to talk and participate and get to know the other girls one on one. It's like small class size vs. big class size. You can still do special activities together that combine the troops, but for monthly meetings, the smaller troops are fantastic!