We're at a bit over a quarter of our band making region this year. I would love to see that a bit higher, but I consider HCBD's numbers there being pretty accurate. We're a 3A with 16 kids who made it out of 56 kids currently in the HS Band. We took 26 that day, and have 3 kids that made Area. This can be highly variant though in my experience based on where you are in the level of your classification for numbers. We're currently at the lower end of 3A, with the schools that had more mostly being at the higher end of our conference. Those numbers make a big difference in raw numbers to have audition and have the work ethic.

I've also watched a lot of cycles of schools dropping down in classification and dominating initially, then things even out over the course of the following years. One school I noted had 60 or 70 students in the region bands 13 years ago, and now had fewer than us...

In the end though, what I'll tell you, is worry about your kids - teach them, and try and get your kids to the next level. If you can get an applied music class at the hs level that lets them work on it with you more individually that can be a huge help! Only one kid from my class didn't make it this year that showed up for auditions.

Your JH kids though are really the key to building this. What's going on at that level? When we began having 17+ kids at that level making it is when we started seeing HS success following it.

I'm in ATSSB Region 14 for your reference, down in the Corpus area.