At our studio we have a senior competition team with serious problems! The girls are suppose to come three days a week: ballet, hip hop, jazz and tap. Now heres the problem/question: The class consist of 15 girls. So far since September 15th we have not once had even a 1/2 full class. All our girls are on the volley ball team, field hockey, tennis, soccer, drama team ect. They find other things to do and choose them over dance. The SO and I get upset week after week and dont know what to do! We want to say forget it, no competitions but we feel bad for the 2 or 3 girls that always come! At your schools do the girls do other things? Do you have the same problems? What do we do?

If you have two or three that regularly come then make the class for them, do trio's or duets at competitions and tell the rest of them to go, if they won't put in the time then they don't deserve the company place. Make no secret of it to your younger dancers who would like to become team members in the future so that they know what happens if you don't put in the time and effort.

What about disbanding the comp team, and allowing the 2-3 girls to compete as a trio? I find that if a comp team isn't committed it reflects poorly on the girls that have worked hard.

I agree if the commitment is not there from the whole team it is unfair to those two-three girls who are putting in the time. All of my team members sign contracts they are allowed to miss 3 weekday practices and 1 weekend practice for the entire year. When they go over their absents they are dismissed from the team. I talk to my girls all the time about commitment and team work not just in dance but in life as well. I know it is hard to think that you may loose a few girls because of this but at some time in life children need to learn that choices have to be made in life. Maybe the decisions they make will make them happy and maybe they will see that a different decision will make them happy. Either way it is a hard lesson.

We do like Ilovedance does. More than 3 classes missed and we reserve the right to dismiss you from the team. Ours is not an automatic because once in a while there's someone who gets very ill, and then something tragic happens so they miss too many, but they still pick up the dances to the point where a veiwer would have no idea they missed even one class. As much as a like having a set policy, I enjoy having the decision to dismiss at my discretion.

If it REALLY is a huge concern and you REALLY want to lay down the law, then you have to. Unfortunately since the season has already started and apparently there is no attendance contract, it will be difficult to enforce now.

Next year you have to tell the girls that they can only miss X number of practices. And if they do? Out the door.

As for right now, you must schedule a mandatory meeting a few weeks from today's date. When the girls show up, you have to tell them it's not working and that if they want to compete, they must meet X,Y,Z criteria to do so. If not? Out the door.

My studio does not compete, but we do have a student company for the older girls to gain experience with, and when they are accepted into the company, they sign a contract that outlines our expectations for their participation, and what will happen if those expectations are not met. They have a new contract to sign every year, to account for any changes made. Perhaps you should consider doing the same for your competition team in the future. This is a big commitment and it sounds like perhaps they don't understand how much of a commitment it actually needs to be in order to function as it should.

For this year, I would send home a letter about the situation and asking that any girls who are still interested in being on the team come discuss it with you as soon as possible, and go from there.

I agree with all of the above.

You need a solid contract.

My Comp kids used to have a limited # of absences allowed. Some did participate in other sports, etc. However, they had to miss games and practices to accommodate our schedule.

For now, I'd say work with the few that are dedicated and dismiss the rest.

People can't be in three places at one time. That is what commitment is all about.

When you're a small dance school to begin with, I think the students know you're stuck for performers, and therefore they can get away with missing a lot. Also, they tell me their sports coaches will kick them off the team if they miss just one of their 4 times a week practices, so there's no flexibility there. The main attraction for some of these sports are the going-away games, and they want to be with all of their friends - must be like a giant slumber party.

I feel your pain. If I demanded a signed contract, they would drop my once-a-week dance class instead, and I wouldn't have enough performers to put on a Nutcracker. I'm not happy about their low level of dancing, but I have to persevere until I can grow my enrollment. Then I can be picky, and frequent abscences would become cause for dismissal from our company.

Definitely make a strict policy! We have a "you miss X classes, you're out" rule for our competition team - most of these girls make dance a priority though so it's only been an issue 1 or 2 times in the past. For recreational classes, we ran into trouble. The SO has always let students in fall activities join in November - usually just 1 or 2 girls in the high school level classes but in the past couple of years it's been half the classes. There was no set in stone policy so we made one for this year - we moved the day of the classes to accommodate more students from the get-go and said if you're not in by September 30, you can't be in the group class but you could do a solo/duo/trio in the recital. It worked overall - we lost a couple students that didn't like the policy but it needed to be stated and changed.

Good luck!