"Are the Rolla/Springfield students originally from the local areas?"
To my knowledge, the first school in Missouri was located in St. Robert. The migration to Springfield wasn't as smooth as many thought or hoped and as far as I know, our first official school attempt failed. In fact, I joined while Springfield was recovering from losing its school on West Chestnut and operating out of a community center and conducting training sessions late at night on SMSU's football field.
As far as I can recall, we came to Springfield first, then to Rolla. Of course, both preceding St. Louis.
"Where did the students orginally learn about the school?"
Personal referrence seems to be a big one. Walk-in traffic seems to be another. But, honestly, we just need to be able to be FOUND, many people are out there looking for us and just don't know we're here. We need to make more NOISE!
"Are most of the students from the local colleges?"
Springfield has at most, maybe 1/3rd of our student population enrolled in some college at least part time... I would hazard a guess that we hover between 1/4th and 1/3rd... MAYBE at times as high as 1/2 college students, but surprisingly enough, we have quite a mixed demographic.
"How far are our schools from the universities?"
Within about 5 or 6 miles of Springfield's school, there are:
SMSU, Drury, Evangel, (and some other community colleges... Springfield has too many colleges to keep track of)
Within maybe 7 miles, we have 3 different high schools, maybe 4.
"Did flyers attract their students originally?"
To my knowledge, the only people who have come in from flyers are those who have had a flyer placed specifically in their hand by someone who was already talking to them about the school...
"How did Springfield's youth programs work? What was different about their efforts vs. STL's programs?"
Springfield, in the past, did afterschool programs with local elementary schools, usually in "low-income" areas, where there already was a lack of afterschool programs. I don't remember details, like how much we charged, but it was something like $15 or $20 per child, for something like an 8-week session. Once a week, from like 3pm-4pm or something like that. And all we did was cover novice/children's curriculum information. <sigh> nothing is more inspiring that watching a child stay in a horse stance, crying, and not really because they want to, but because they just don't know any better...
ah, those were the days... Anyway, I don't have the time or manpower to commit to restart this endeavor. Before, we had multiple Sihings, and it was feasible to do activities like this, but, I'm having a hard time just keeping an open class with the 2 sihings I have to work with, so, until I get a sihing with time to oversee a project like this, it won't happen in springfield again for a while. We had done some work to see about having the kids brought to a single location, possibly bussed by the public school system, either to our school or to a single public school, to keep us from having to find multiple people (even multiple sihings) that had to drive to multiple locations. But, that kind of program requires more than just the ok of a school principle, the public school administration needs to ok it, and you have to set up a more formal program. The only failing in ours was we failed to write up accomodations (financially) for kids who were on the school lunch program. Now, we could write it up and get it going again, we just don't have the resources to do so.
Currently, something like twice a year, Big Brothers & Big Sisters gets a bunch of kids together and brings them to our school for a seminar. At least, it's supposed to happen like twice a year. We only just started last year, but that was going pretty good. Plus, Big Brothers & Big Sisters has their own scholarship program for kids in their program that wish to do activities, like take martial arts classes.
I have no information on any of the efforts in other regions, so I don't know how to compare differences.
Our local scholarship program is a very simple one. We have a basic application they fill out requesting the scholarship. This is submitted by the school to the Huangse Gebei Xitong's local office, and once a month, they try to find a local member willing to sponsor the applicant. The scholarship/sponsorship is a 3-month commitment, meant to assist a new applicant in paying for a 3-month contract, where the sponsor commits to paying a portion or even all of the contract amount. The scholarship is based on a 3-month cycle, so every 3-months, the sponsor can decide whether or not to continue the sponsorship/scholarship. This lets the pupil earn the scholarship/sponsorship based on need and keep it by staying honest and earnest in his/her desire to learn Kung Fu.
Anyway, I'm gonna stop here before you guys begin to think I'm long-winded or something.
