fred johnson

Calico's points are very good. But I do take minor exception to a few comments ... IMHO, you are describing how the SM & CC "SHOULD" relate to each other. They "SHOULD" relate to each other as equals. ... BUT ... you do need a clear structure and that structure should be understood to avoid issues when challenging decisions need to be made or we need someone to be the bad guy and lay down the law. Example, cubmaster wants to organize a pack weekend canoe trip. At that point, the CC has the responsibility to lay down the law and make sure the pack complies with BSA policies. Everyone has the responsibility, but the buck stops at the CC. Ultimately, the scoutmaster is a report to the committee. Call it support. Call it approval. It's both. It's about working together. Slight clarification .... Institutional head can remove anyone. But has to do it through the district exec as they are not "signers" on the form. COR and CC need to be in agreement when new leaders are appointed. As for removal, either can pretty much take care of that. That's why COR and CC are the only two positions leaders can hold at the same time. Interesting note, scoutmasters can't approve their own assistants. That's a CC/COR job. =============================== Anytime you talk about who reports to who it reflects a bigger issue. The unit adult leaders need to find ways to constructively work with each other.

QUESTION ,,, Where do you ever see the CM over the CC or even parallel to the CC? I could swear I've seen that too, but I just can't find it. It's essentially always Charter org --> charter org executive --> charter org rep --> committee chair --> scoutmaster --> assistant scoutmasters Ultimately, though that's moot. We're all volunteers and everyone needs to be working in the same direction and constructively with each other. IMHO, that's the CC's most important job: to keep the adults working nicely with each other. But there are some ultimate key things. Example: CC has responsibility to interpret and comply with BSA policies. Everyone does it, but he's the "buck-stops-here" person before it hits the untrained charter org people.

Our experience is it gets out of sync when parents go in and edit data. Update phones. Update emails. Update names. etc. We have not done it for a few years. At this point, we just keep the data in SOAR and we're happy.

IMHO, this is a fully different and larger issue. IMHO, BORs should be made available as soon as possible. Scout asks for a SMC. Scoutmaster and scout chat. "IDEALLY" ... scoutmaster immediately walks the scout over for a board of review. If not, the scoutmaster works to make it happen as soon as possible. The SMC is the last "requirement". The BOR is paperwork and to benefit the troop as much as the scout.

I am a huge proponent of having ECOH as part of a normal COH. IMHO, it has numerous benefits. I don't care so much for close one COH & open the next COH. I'd rather just have a slightly longer COH that includes eagle rank recognition. It's just a rank, not a crowning.

The key comments I see are that if your son has a special need, it is often best to be actively involved in the troop so you can be his safety net. Scouting is very supportive of scouts with special needs, but you don't always have the right set of volunteers to help special needs. As such, stepping up can greatly improve things. What the ASM couple did was tacky. I didn't violated any rule other than courtesy and kindness. In their mind, they may have been acting ... in their view ... out of due precaution ... and ignoring the spitefulness of it. Informational privacy and need to know ... HIPPA doesn't apply here. Even if HIPPA did apply, it's moot. They are BSA registered just like the potential new troop leaders. The health form is a BSA health form, etc, it's not leaving organizational boundaries. Same as summer camp where troops don't require special signed permission to show the BSA health forms to the BSA summer camp. It's really the need-to-know and even then that's a fuzzy line. Need-to-know can be debated on each side. Move past it. You can't win there. Where you can win is BSA is good with people that have special needs. If the troop accepts your son as a scout in the troop, then they need to work with him and be supportive. A few right placed words / requests can go far. -------------------- Most importantly ... Get involved in your son's scouting career and show support for all the scouts in the troop.

ScoutBook ... that's another thread. IMHO, just another duplicate adult tracking tool forced downward to scouts.

Yeah ... I'm not much into the eagle mill debate. I just liked when it was more let's go take a merit badge. and it was fun. and the kid enjoyed it. It was not the stressful uptight situation it is now. Heck, one of my best memories was three boys from the same family in our troop years. All from a very testosterone filled family with a very big, intimidating dad. Friday summer camp court of honor, families drove up to attend. The three boys called their dad up and handed him their three wicker baskets from basket weaving. It was their joke on their dad. The merit badge was fun and way to learn something and spend time with your friends. The kids enjoyed a good portion of the merit badges. And those that they didn't, they found a way to enjoy it. Hopefully, without getting in trouble. I want just it to be fun so the kids want to keep going and doing more and exploring and trying more. Nagging three months in advance about summer camp merit badges takes the fun out of it. As much as possible, summer camp should be ... show up, explore, figure out camp and then decide what you want to do.

I know this digresses from the original poster's topic. My apologies. I'll miss the years of summer camp where the first afternoon at camp, the scouts sat at picnic tables chatting about which badge they were going to take and trying to convince their friends to take the same ones. On the table would be print outs of the merit badges and what was offered when. And, dozens and dozens of MB blue cards to be filled out by the scouts. And the scouts figuring out where they needed to be where and when. It was a neat exercise in organization for the scouts. I'll take that over what I've seen this year. We're still almost two months from summer camp and we're getting emails about last chance to sign up for merit badges. And it's at least the 3rd or 4th email on it ... from an adult ... mainly listened to by scout parents. I much prefer the lower stress old method.

I'm sad to see that. I think the blue card was a great scout-level way of doing things. Left the MB in the scout's hands to manage and get done. And it was a ton of life lessons for the scout to manage and take responsibility for handing in that little blue sheet of paper. Or preventing it from becoming mush in the wash or during a rain storm. I just don't want my son to have to bring a smart phone to camp or a tablet or go to an adult for him to manage his own advancement. That just seems wrong. I don't think it's cheaper, but I understand it's significantly easier. I always sort of viewed the blue card as part of the learning experience.

Maybe I'm too isolated, but I don't see that anywhere. At the 2010 Jamboree, scouts only had to badge into merit badge sessions to receive the MB. Other than that, all scouts and MBC use blue cards to record progress and record completion. Between the troop and councils, most are electronic reporting these days, but you've never had to hand in the blue card segment to the council ... at least for the last 15 years. Moosetracker ... can you tell us more?

If this was not an LDS troop, I'd be telling you to switch troops. As it's LDS, I don't know what your options are. This is an adult induced problem and it should be the adult leaders who step up to fix it. The only learning lesson I see in this is to be jadded and not trust people. And, that's not a lesson we want to teach our scouts. Instead we need to teach the lesson that when people screw up, they step up and fix it. That's your troop leaders job and the lesson they should be teaching through their example fixing the situation. If I a scout asks for a blue card, the standard reply should be a smile, good wishes and maybe a few friendly questions or suggestions about it. Period. ----------------------------- SLIGHT EDIT - I just don't understand at all why troops feel like they need to record individual requirement tracking for merit badges at all. Maybe .. maybe rank individual requirement tracking. But even then, I'd argue you are better off not tracking the detailed requirements. It perverts the program. Advancement is to be controlled and driven by the individual scout with some friendly encouragement and support from the troop (... and family ... mainly encouragement from family).

BSA's rules on laser tag and water guns (non realistic looking ones) just adds reality to the perception that scouts is pansy and out-of-touch. I'm a follow-the-rules type of guy, but I just roll my eyes at this stuff. It's embarrassing. Perhaps BSA needs to look to GSUSA to learn to be a bit more manly.

SOAR isn't tied to TroopMaster except that it can import TroopMaster data same as many other systems including ScoutBook. I'ved tried the SOAR / TroopMaster integration and I would not recommend it. It's too easy to get out of sync, lose data or create duplicate membership records. If you use the two, keep the contact information in SOAR and the advancement details in TroopMaster. Use the TroopMaster import to initially load SOAR. But after that, never never import again. Just have an agreement on what is kept where.

Yeah, I work with many units in our local area. I really can't recommend ScoutBook.com until I see the benefit.

Agreed. Simple is good. Many find TroopMaster and detailed advancement tracking is important. I don't and it actually scares me as it gets the adults too involved with scout advancement. I really really like using the paper handbooks for as much as possible.

TroopMaster is archaic, fully agreed. SOAR is not archaic at all. It's more a minimalist web interface ... which turns out to be faster and more flexible when moving between many different platforms.

Bump. Just looking for other people and their experiences.

Anyone used ScoutBook.com ? Anyone ?

Has anyone beside Bad Wolf and myself looked at ScoutBook.com ???

Bad Wolf ... Agreed. We use SOAR. It's great. We stopped using Troopmaster as no one really needed the data. We enter the merit badges and ranks directly in ScoutNet. It produces a nice pick sheet PDF file for shopping at the scout shop. There are a few key roster and advancement reports from ScoutNet we can run on demand. Plus, it's the official source. Nothing like getting the key data from the horses mouth. We've been doing this for years and it's really all we need. The rest just seemed like busy work ... so we stopped. IMHO, I think we are better off this way. Of course, without SOAR we'd be hosed ... and no ... I do not work for SOAR.

http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2015/05/27/scoutbook-creator-shawn-jackson-sits-down-for-a-quick-chat BSA is about to start pushing ScoutBook. So far from what I see, it will be a long time before I'd suggest any of my scouting units use it. What do you think?

Nice work Marco. I wish you the best. Just be careful and look to see if you can rebuild the relationships with the people who might be upset.

Not true at all. Financial problems because of disorganization or dishonesty. At a paid job, it's easy to be a hard head because people want to keep their jobs and people want to get ahead. With scouting, each time someone volunteers, that volunteering experience is a marketing the troop and a re-evaluation of does the volunteer want to help again. Find a way to recreate, document and/or prove the expense happened. Then get the person reimbursed. If you play hard nose with volunteers, the easiest response by the volunteer is to not help again. And that's very reasonable. ... essentially ... find a way to prove the expense an the amount ... and get the person reimbursed. In the original poster's case, if the troop has the habit of doing it in advance and everyone agrees and it looks like it is not exorbitant but instead reasonable and definite, then just do it. Personally, I'm not used to reimbursement before the fact. But it does not seem very unusual.

... and then we meet reality. No troop works "properly" for very long. It's good to know the ideal and the proper method sets expectations. But then we adjust to support the continually changing volunteer base filled with people of vastly different skills and experiences. To avoid being that old-boys-club, we welcome volunteers and help them succeed and help them get reimbursed. Sometimes that means helping them get, recreate or explain a reimbursement.