Middle school kids are always going to want to follow the crowd, so I've seen this happen a few times. I've yet to figure out how to completely mitigate those kids, but making the students understand our complete program, that you can do sports and band, you can do dual credit and band, and that having a well-rounded time in school can help them get scholarships helps. I usually tell them specifically about how I wasn't intending to major in music in college, but how music was part of the puzzle that landed me my 2/3rds scholarship.

It's not really something I would do this year, but I think it was Kathy Johnson (when she was still at Argyle) a few years back had this really incredible presentation about matching up 8th graders with 6th graders to be mentors at the beginning of the year. It helped them have a much better retention going into high school - probably helped some in this case too.

I still remember though like my second or third year in my current district we had these two sixth graders who actively tried to get kids to quit band going into seventh grade. Worst retention probably ever that year since they were popular. They got to watch us go to State though before they graduated, and they certainly didn't do so with their teams!