When I was in my previous district, we had a MAJOR push for CTE. We went from Band, Art, Theatre, Career Investigations, PE/Athletics...to offering 25 different electives through specific designed pathways starting for 6th graders. We only had 450 students on campus AND some of these classes students had to travel to either the HS or another building close to downtown.

We had to start 5th grade recruitment early! October-ish. I took my JH bands there for a Fall/Halloween performance and we started visiting their classes around January and start instrument testing beginning of February.

We were fine as long as we were getting 45-50 students, some years were worse than others. This worked for a few years since we had the kids every day in a 90 minute block. All Beginners, Non Varsity and Varsity bands for that long. Until my final year we were told to help enrollment in the other classes, the NV and V classes were going to every other day. Because obviously offering that many electives to 450-475 students was not the issue...

It is hard to compete with these classes in the eyes of both the parents and students. In the end, cater to the kids who choose band and make them wonderful musicians. I was still able to be successful with my smaller bands and my successors are still successful. Unfortunately, this fight is all over the state and will only become a bigger fight.