Eagle1993

Perhaps for Cub Scouts but absolutely not for Scouts BSA. Scouting isn't for everyone. If a kid doesn't like camping out two nights or wants a day camp experience perhaps just stick with travel indoor sports. Also, while adult leader meetings are a great time for adults to drink and eventually discuss the Troop, scout outings are not. As a parent who has kids in both travel sports and scouts, I find the fewer parents involved in scouting a major benefit. Let's not destroy scouting by taking everything that is bad with travel sports and applying it to Scouts BSA.

That is true for many sports, but I pay fees to be a NICA mountain bike coach. There is an annual background check fee to a 3rd party and annual registration fee. To be a level 2 coach I have to take a specific training course, in person. In addition I have to pay for mountain bike first aid and CPR every two years. NICA tracks the level of coaches and has very strict rules on rider to coach ratios, including coaching levels. It ensures the program is run well and consistently. I do wish BSA used the same background check company as other organizations so and then that fee would be o

So, instead of making a simple first class requirement like we had for the majority of BSA history like " On one overnight, serve as patrol cook & prepare breakfast, lunch, & dinner that require cooking." Instead we have the following: 2a. Help plan a menu for one of the above campouts that includes at least one breakfast, one lunch, and one dinner, and that requires cooking at leastt wo of the meals. Tell how the menu includes the foods from MyPlate or thec urrent USDA nutritional model and how it meets nutritional needs for thep lanned activity or campout. 2b. Using t

See attached for the history of rank requirements. You can see the trend from simply... Cook for your patrol to getting meals approved against a budget following my plate. Just an example of how this becomes an issue... My nephew was denied his first class cooking completion because he went over his self estimated budget. The SM told him that staying within budget is part of the requirement.... Could you imagine better ways to kill motivation of a 12 year old then talking about food budgeting? I digress... Even through the 1990s, the rank requirements were almost exclusively outd

Another way to look at this. 4 indoor troop meetings a month 4 indoor PLC meetings a month 1 campout a month 1/9 activities are outdoors.....

It would be interesting to see this as a percentage of children. I'm not sure what that looks like, but I think it was on the order of 25%.

Single family households are actually declining now. I'm not sure why they would make a change now for that... But perhaps it was overdue.

In our Troop there was a big change pre and post Covid. We have had a few den chiefs and traditionally Cub scouts participated in a hike, meeting and our winter Klondike. We held a pretty elaborate crossover ceremony as well. That died since Covid. The packs had substantial losses, we had no Scouts interested in being den chiefs, the pack leaders and parents were no longer interested in hiking or camping with the Troop (at least vs the numbers we had 2019 and prior). 1 of our feeder packs collapsed once the Catholic Church stopped their recharter and the adults no longer ca

Scouting must be able to operate along with sports ... our Troop always has; however, there are limitations. It is tough to form solid patrols if kids are absent every weekend all year. The only benefit of the increasing cost of scouting is I see fewer scouts who have low participation rates. One of our ASMs brought up a good point. From what she has seen (two kids both high school grads), sports picks up a lot during middle school, but drops (for many kids) early in High School. I've seen the same ... many kids & parents drop sports Freshman year as school gets more challenging a

I just did a crossover with our primary feeder pack. The pack has 90 scouts. Roughly 20 Lions, 20 Tigers, 20 Wolves, 15 Bears, 10 Webelos and 5 AOL. Of the 5 AOL only 1 wants to continue in Scouts. That 1 only joined Cub Scouts this year.... I talked with the other 4 parents. - They are looking to reduce activities after 5th grade - All are planning to increase their kids involvement in travel sports.... So no time left for scouts

To clarify, all of these decisions and actions are the BSA's to own. It was their decisions that led to the situation we are in; I think you need to go back further to see how these decisions all relate and many of the decisions were linked to BSA's concern of losing LDS members followed by reactions to losing LDS members. I went back and updated the name of the church as one of the best scouters on this forum, @The Latin Scot has mentioned the correct name to use in the past.

I expect each time they did risk/benefit tradeoff discussions. They may have been better talking with 3 guys at a food truck. These decisions really started with Dale (perhaps you could argue it goes back to their partnership with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). I'm sure each time they weighed the risks of change and did their best.. but clearly the end result has been failure. 1999- Keeping Gay scouts out... To prevent angering the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, BSA fought to keep gay scouts out. In 1999/2000 there was limited blow back. Howev

BSA mentioned this, which is why they added girls but kept girls in their own den and Troop. The idea was that it would prevent any loss of boys while also adding girls. Clearly that strategy didn't work, which is likely one reason why they are adding fully coed options. No point in keeping them separated if it didn't keep scouts/scouters from quitting and many packs/Troops operated like coed units anyway.

When we hear BSA plans to simplify the program (for Scouts), is the fear moving it back to 1972 and skill awards?

BSA lost a million and a half scouts from the start of Dale to lifting the ban on gay scouts. They fought 15+ years and cemented their legacy of discrimination against the gay community. Yes they are much more inclusive now, but 15+ years digs a deep hole of mistrust. GSUSA who avoided that mess has 700,000 more girls than total youth in BSA. That said, it is tough to determine if BSA numbers would be better now if they accepted gay youth at the same time GSUSA did. Loosing relationships with public schools was damaging, but I expect trends would have worked against BSA regardless.