fred johnson

For you to say thank you to your wife ... a plaque? Only if you incorporated your marriage as a business. Go right to giving nice jewelry and a nice dinner. Maybe you can find jewelry with stones in a cub scout color. How about a nice gold chain? Or a decorative pin. Jewelry goes much further. Gave my wife extremely nice jewelry each time one of our sons were born. Diamond ring, necklace, ear rings, etc...

blw2 ... nice list. I also fully agree with what you said. There is too much emphasis on detailed requirement tracking. IMHO, let the scout track it in his book or use the BSA scoutet sign-in. We use scouttrack.com and soarol.com. I love soarol.com because of the great features. ScoutTrack.com is loved by our unit leaders who are very much into painful requirement tracking. but it seems to defeat the intention of scouting and make scouting just more homework. Anyway, nice list. We've used SOAROL.com for many years now. Life saver.

I struggle with OA involvement. I promote it, support elections, etc. But most of our scouts just don't get much out of OA other than the ordeal and/or brotherhood. Our district does have troops host district camporees and special events. When hosting, the scouts in that unit are given a very special experience to plan and coordinate the event. It is a great experience for the scouts. Other than units hosting district events, I do NOT think scouts should have regular leadership responsibility at the district level. If they really want to be or if their special situation would

I just don't see any benefit either. But I see a whole bunch of risks and problems. adults not staying at a distance. Reducing the independence of the scouts.

In our pack, rechartering Webelos 2 in the last few years would be a $300 to $500 cost. $24 plus $12 for boy's life. Packs get screwed by this. Fundraiser / dues do not matter. Money is coming out of pack checking account and the people are not in the pack anymore after a short time. I would do two things. #1 Recharter the boys this year. Otherwise you will piss off the boys or the troop they join. #2 Move next year's blue and gold to before the recharter date. The submit the $1 fee the day after the blue and gold. Then, submit the recharter. IMHO, it's worth it.

Scoutmaster Jim ... That diagram is right from the BSA. http://www.scoutmastercg.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/troop_committee_guidebook.pdf The situation is slightly murky until you look at the forms. From my experience, the CC can remove a volunteer. But the COR and CC "both" need to sign the leader applications. Look at the form. Now, if the COR wants to sign for the CC, that's his choice too. Anyway ... Lazerous thread. Well debated. The real issue is that adult volunteers are not a employer / employee relationship. Ya need to work together.

I like what qwazse wrote. My big fear is that it is hard enough to get one adult who get's what it means to be a good scoutmaster. Now, you've got to basically have a good SM plus multiple good ASMs. My fear is the adult who just can't follow directions or keep to the agreement of "I'm here if you have a question". I've run into way way too situations where there is an adult that for their own edification needs to inject themselves into everything. You might define the role as an at-a-distance-advisor-only-if-really-needed, but I'll bet 30% or more of the adults will have a har

Mr. Texas, Not sure why you're having an issue with this. Volunteers don't get paid. Correct. PLUS even more so, volunteers often pay to go on camp outs and also cover many incidental expenses. How about gas money and their car use for a multi-hour drive. But to then go and ask them to pay BSA dues is beyond basic courtesy. For I bet 90+ percent of the troops and packs, the scouts and the unit fundraisers pay for the adult registrations. The real issue is when does someone become a committee member? Every parent that shows up? Only if you help? Help at how many events? What type

Sometimes it's hard to punish the right person. We used to teach our son that it's usually the person who reacts who gets punished. As such, we tried to teach our son to stand up for himself but not necessarily to fight back. I think something similar is needed here. The broken situation needs to be made whole by the person who did the act performing some form of restitution to the person who was damaged. Or some reasonable and timely substitute. But as for the instigator ... the kid who sews the trouble ... I'd approach that both individually (one on one) and also as a whole t

Bank access - Troop - CC, SM, Treasurer, adv chair... pack - CC, CM, treasurer How many committee members? We're changing on that this year. We have lots of parents that step forward. The best thing we do is when a parent volunteers for something, we smile, say thank you and get out of their way. We want them to keep helping and not make it more difficult. The reason it's changing is budget. When I started years ago, it was $9 or $10 to register an adult. 5 committee people was $50. We've grown and added more. Now it went from $15 to $24. At $24, those five are $120. But

Qwazse ... It's busywork because it's just not needed. Why does the AC have to update her records? It's not her advancement. Boys know what's going on pretty darn good. Plus, scouts should be scheduling the program to reflect FCFY (scouts don't have to advance, but the troop should be doing activities that pretty much cover FCFY as a measure of a good program ... hikes ... skill games ... cooking ... program elements ... ). The main role of the AC is to collect rank and MB advancements, submit them to the council for recognition and acquire them for the courts of honor ... at least in

As an adult leader, I've benefited from an up-to-date Troopmaster record. It helps know what to plan. What advancement item multiple scouts are missing. But, ya know. I don't miss it one bit. It puts too much power in the adults hands and creates too much of a beaurocracy. Advancement is an individual scout issue. AND ... the only official records are the signatures in the scout handbook from leaders who sign off (initials), signed off blue card stubs and the BSA scoutnet database. Troopmaster looks nice and useful, but I think it is busywork. If a troop is boy run, which reports

$40 really? Not worth it. - Read the eagle packet. - Read the GTA section ... if you want. - Talk to your troop eagle coach - Talk to the district eagle advancement contact ... if appropriate Charging $40 just seems out of place. Must be something special to charge $40.

I must have 20+ sleeping bags in our garage. Most I just keep rolled as I don't think it matters that much for the average bag as long as you dry and air them out after using them. Anything below Walmart, Target, or Coleman are just not that sensitive ... IMHO. But ... I do treat my ultra light bag and my -40 degree bag very differently. Hang and leave un-rolled. I paid over $200 for each and their performance depends on being stored uncompressed. But I just don't think it matters that much for the low end sleeping bags. It also depends on what the internal material is and lighter bags do dep

The big need for the form is so that scout eagle projects do not compete with council fundraising. i.e. friends of scouting, popcorn sales, etc. Councils don't want individuals put in situation where they decide whether to donate to friends of scouting or an eagle project. As for what happened here, a good attached explanation is fine. My real worry, which is not a show stopper, is that the scout might face questions about his leadership. Whose project was it? Who led the money raiser? I would just make sure the explanation says that the beneficiary handled and collected the funds.

Fully agree. Our troop records "completed" achievements. In progress achievements should be managed by the scout.

KDD - You're assuming it's a bad solution. Keeping the blue cards tucked in the scout handbook is a good solution. I know many leaders who would do the exact same thing for similar items. Heck, when I get an oil change or car repair, I tuck the receipt into my car's owner manual. Plus, the scout handbook is the one item scouts are supposed to bring to every meeting. Plus if the parents buy a cover with a zippered pocket, then the scout has a zippered pocket to use. The absolute worst solution would be to have a parent or a troop advancement coordinator organize and keep the merit bad

Basementdweller ... Yeah, but if you leave the scout in the position and he pushed it he could advance under protest thru the district. You mentioned it in another one of your posts. If the scout is not meeting your expectations, you should remove him. But if the scout gets to the end of his term and time is up, you can't start telling him he's not meeting expectations ... after the fact. The scout gets credit for time served. Especially in this case where the scout attended all metings except two. That means he could argue he did make a contribution thru his position. Basementdwell

Basementdweller wrote: "GTA is for weak leaders or guys like KDD who don't have the stones ..." ... That's funny. I always thought the leaders who had trouble with the GTA were too busy on a power trip to avoid playing abusive head games with their scouts. But, I guess it's a tomAto / tomahto thing. The funny thing is that you recommend exactly what the GTA says should happen ... removing the scout. If a scout isn't doing the job, remove him. That's even what the GTA says. And that's the type of stones the GTA expects leaders to have. But the GTA exists to protect scouts from abus

It's a lesson in many ways. A lesson in keeping track of their own stuff. A lesson of working with others to fix situations when problems occur and how they should help others when problems occur. Sometimes an error prone solution is a good solution because we are not looking for perfection. We are looking for learning opportunities. KDD - Money is a different but similar. If the kid is carrying around $10 and loses it, then fine. The world won't end. If the kid is carrying around $10,000 then I'd want him to find a better solution. Heck, it seems that a good number of scouts every

Well said.

"The CC will not see a lad if he does not meet those requirements." ... BSA says a BOR shall not be denied if requested.

Lots of opinions exist on this and many many many are wrong. Period. Read what BSA says in the Guide To Advancement. You can't go wrong if you do your best to implement the program you signed your name to running on your BSA application. Read GTA section 4.2.3.1 ... "impact" ... "making a difference" .... "reasonable" ... "a lesser level of activity is explained" http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/33088.pdf Want clarifications? Read the advancement news. http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/...ment_News.aspx

Attendance requirements are perfectly fine ... as long as they are reasonable. The place where I have the problem is with the: "I created campout attendance requirements." That's not the scoutmasters job. It's the PLC job. AND ... it's not the SM job to guilt or corner the PLC into creating such requirements. Only to guide and help the PLC learn and choose wisely. Your troop can do as it wants as long as no one knows better ... but if challenged and put against the BSA GTA, the GTA uses the phrase reasonable and measures against competing issues. *** READ GTA section 4.2.3.1

I'm not sure your statement matches the situation at all. - Old policy was draconian? Not really. From what I saw, the policy was mainly imposed when someone was trying to make a statement about the policy being wrong. Essentially boxing in the BSA on it's own beliefs. There were no witch hunts. There were no 20 question interviews. - BSA has no opinion? Again, I'm not sure that's entirely clear. BSA never removed any previous statements. It just says youth are better off in scouting than not in scouting. Previous statements about morally straight have not been revoked. A