fred8033

eisely: Great job! Sounds just like what our district does. Our guy doesn't do just Mondays, but he does protect his calendar, his life and his marriage.

I should mention I've heard a few of those conversations when they are face to face. His first question is also ... when do you turn 18?(This message has been edited by fred8033)

Mad Max: Just to be clear, are you saying your scouts will be required to do the final plan? You wrote "cover to cover" and "for lack of a final plan" and "I got no pushback at all". But you also wrote "is to do it just like the (BSA) book presents it". So, I'm confused.

I'm just not sure what you would get pushback for if your doing it just like the book presents it. I know TwoCubDad said his unit won't sign Eagle Proposals or Fundraising Plans without a detailed budget. Essentially establishing unit expectations that are beyond the BSA book.

Are you saying your unit won't accept proposals or projects without a final plan? When would the road block be put up? Proposal sign-off? Fundraiser sign-off? Project report sign-off?

Mind you, I'm not arguing against the need for a final plan. Any significant work needs planning. And I'm betting I won't see an eagle workbook without most or all of the final plan filled out.

I'm just interested in how many units or districts are planning to implement their own expectations.

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RememberSchiff: Nice analysis. I yearn for what you describe (i.e. eagle scout reflecting scout spirit and not an uber-leader). But that gets back to scouting emphasizing citizenship instead of leadership. Yet another different discussion.

It's one reason I like the new workbook and process. Gets back to the scout doing a good deed and less of being a master bureaucrat.

Eagle92 wrote: "... but I beleive it is council wide. "

In our council, every district can be very different.

I've been amazed just how different. Our district runs the EBORs at roundtable but a neighboring district has troops schedule the EBORs and only supply a district advancement rep to sit on the EBOR. Others districts schedule them ad-hoc.

Even year to year it changes greatly as people change. Before it took a committee approval to approve an project proposal and took months. Now, it's one really knowledgable scouter and he can usually meet with you the same week.

I don't think there's a district standard "process" ... even within one council.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

Eagle92 wrote: "They meet once a month to do EBORs and approve projects."

IMHO ... once a month approval is not showing much support for the scout.

Though there may not be a rule against it, IMHO that's just not cool. EBORs once a month ... fine. It should NOT affect eagle rank. BUT approving projects once a month adds headaches and delays for the scout. What if they want changes or won't sign, then it's two months to get a signature.

Project approval should not take more than a week ... excluding scout effort and scout time to make corrections. For my son's project, the project was reviewed two days after he called the DAC and approved at that meeting. (I was expecting it to be bounced to make improvements, but it got signed.)

Basement ... It's all a matter of #1 project needs and #2 proportion.

IMHO, food during the event is a "supply" (volunteer incentive or health and safety protection) to get the job done. Food after the event is a thank you. The eagle project workbook specifically calls out both food as a supply and calls out saying thank you in the project report. IMHO, volunteer labor is also a donation just like money, wood, shovels, etc.

Proportion... if the project is to restore a stream filled by sediment or to remove a forest of buckthorn, you might need a large crew for multiple days. You might spend hundreds and hundreds or more and 90% of your budget on food for the crew.

If volunteer construction ... a $1000 project is probably okay spending $20 to $100 feeding the crew and also probably okay spending $10 to $20 on tokens to say thank you to the volunteers and/or donors. Maybe more. A $100,000 volunteer construction is probably okay spending hundreds, a thousand or more on food and spending $300 to $1000 saying thank you. A million dollar specific donation probably includes a catered thank you event. Heck, many projects pay for bronze plaques naming the donors bolted to large rocks. That's out of donation money.

It's all a matter of the project needs and proportionality.

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The problem I see is "expecting" parents to pay. Yes, I donated pizzas to my son's eagle project. Six Little Ceasar $5 pizzas. Walmart generic two liter $0.99 sodas. Paper towels and Red Solo cups (... go Toby Keith ...) But it was in his plan, recorded as a donation and I received a thank you letter (tax deduction record) from the beneficiary. But you can't REQUIRE a charitable contribution. That's an oxymoron. And the scout should plan and budget the food. It's part of the project.

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twocubdad wrote: "Another new item in the new workbook is an Eagle Project Fundraising Application which requires approval of the unit, beneficiary and council. This unit will not approve a fundraising app without a detailed budget."

I know this is a discussion that's already happened and will keep happening for years to come. But here it is.

The eagle workbook proposal includes a "Preliminary Cost Estimate". The fundraising app includes a description of how much and how it will be used. Most importantly the workbook includes page 21 that teaches the scout and his parents what is required. Now most parents and scouts won't realize your requiring more or will decide it's not worth picking a fight. But, refusing to approve a fundraising app without a detailed budget is adding requirements. I understand the need and depending on the budget might also work to see the details, but it's still adding requirements.

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And yes... adult leaders help scouts fight the battles with other adult leaders. That's why we are there.

(This message has been edited by fred8033)

You encountered yet another rule that's really just a personal preference / opinion.

Let the scout decide. It's his project. Seems 100% appropriate as it's part of getting the job done. ... and there's no rule against it.

QUICK CORRECTION - The wrong thing is to expect the parents to pay. A scout pays his own way. So the real scout decision is to feed or not to feed. If the project plan includes providing food for volunteers, funding it is part of the project. ... Of course, it could be funded thru a donation to the project ... by the parents ... or by the scoutmaster ... or by the local Subway or Pizza Hut ... but it's part of the project and essentially a donation to the project.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

(duplicate)(This message has been edited by fred8033)

Again, JMHawkins wrote a reply much better than I can say it. But I spent the time writing ... so here's my comment.

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jblake47 wrote: "I find it difficult to accept the vs. in the title Citizenship and Leadership are one and the same."

I can understand but I agree with the topic in that I'd rather see scouting focused on citizenship and stop hearing people say scouting teaches leadership. IMHO, saying scouting teaches leadership is destructive for the same reasons listed by JMHawkins. Leadership should be at the same level as teaching skills, teaching responsibility, teaching being an active member of a group and teaching scouts to get the job done. All aspects of citizenship.

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Often, we won't be the most skilled in the current topic. Most of the time, we won't be the documented crowned leader. But 100% of the time we can lead by our example and be an active member of a group trying to accomplish a goal.

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JMHawkins: At times I hope national reads some of these posts and reflects on the topics and makes changes. This is one.

JMHawkins: Nicely written and agree. I'd love to see scouting emphasize citizenship at a higher level then leadership. And your points are very good.

Great statement ... "Citizenship includes leadership, when leadership is needed and you're the right person to provide it. It also includes being responsible for your job when being responsible for your job is what's needed."

... "Passively following whoever is declared boss isn't the same thing at all. It's the difference between citizenship and serfdom." ... I've seen several troops that solely focus on leadership development beyond common sense and diminishing the average troop member.

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Related... There was something that I really liked when I saw it. The new eagle workbook is called the "Eagle Scout Service Project Workbook". They dropped the word leadership from the title. I liked that as it emphasizes service (part of citizenship) and responsibility. Leadership is still key, but it puts a little more focus back on service and doing a good deed.

Twocubdad ... You hit it on the head. I've had many of the same thoughts but never put them down.

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EVERYONE - Read TwoCubDad's Jan 17th post. What a great statement! I wish BSA would realign with the approach TwoCubDad wrote.

- Drop the Cub Scout "graduation" idea. It's just an excuse to leave.

- Make Cub Scouts / Boy Scouts a continuous progression.

- Drop the need to fill out a new form to join a boy scout troop. It's just the next step.

- Drop the Arrow Of Light being the Cub Scout highest award, instead it's just the award at the end of the Webelos year. Like changing from Cub Scouts earning their current rank to the Boy Scouts earning their next rank.

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I was really just wondering if BSA had an initiative. Now, I wish TwoCubDad's post was that initiative.

Fehler wrote:: "You have too much information, its starting to no longer be useful. District meetings and special trainings 6 months out? Why do non-PLC scouts need to know when PLC meetings are? Simplify a printed "Parent's Information" calendar, and then tell the SM/ASMs/MCs to look it up on-line and print their own if they need it."

We are just trying to show a similar amount of info to what we showed when we authored it in Microsoft Word.

- PLCs are included because roles change. Elections are every six months. We want the scouts to get used to the same calendar because they will be on that PLC more than once. Also, the "program patrol" needs to know when they need to plan activities and when the info is needed. It's also useful because scouts sometimes drop paperwork or equipment off during the committee half of the PLC meeting.

- Round tables are listed because that's when the youth OA rep needs attend his OA meetings. Also, it's when EBORs are done and other special training / activities occur.

We just want everyone working off one calendar that has the necessary info. We used to be able to do it very easily in the past. Not so much now.

I realize we could shrink founds, print four pages one one page, etc. But at some point it just looks sloppy and not something you want to represent the quality of your pack or troop.

Thus the reason I'm hoping to find a solution to creating an automated printable calendar. Our web vendor doesn't support it. Google's printed calendar is poor.

Okay. Thanks. Sounds like there is no "rumor" or other initiative. Just something in our own council or district. Hmmmm....

I know there was an inquiry last year or the year before on how to improve scouting locally. I know one idea was to focus on troops supporting their CO's pack. Maybe it is just the local full-circle result of that suggestion.

I understand the debate.

I'm just wondering if someone has heard of something coming out of national within the last year emphasizing the alignment between same COR units.

For our troop, we have two or three troop meetings a month, a camp out (two to seven days), an activity, district meetings, special training and other extra stuff. It's usually six entries minimum a month. Some months have ten entries. Each Google calendar entry takes five lines plus one blank line (six total). Twelve months * 8 entries average * six = 576 lines. Add more for multi-day events. Assuming 60 lines per page, that's ten pages.

For our pack, it might be workable as we only have two or three pack events per month. BUT ... for committee meetings... , it's useful to have a list of when everyone is meeting to plan out activities and special events. That is easily ten per month. Try to bring a useful calendar to review at committee meetings.

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Fehler wrote:: "I have a Pack, not a Troop, so the number of multi-day events is one a year. I have January-May Pack events on two pages (not including den meetings, they do their own scheduling)."

That's five months. Probably two events per month. Twelve events requiring two pages. At least that can be one sheet of paper both sides.

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I'm just sort of stuck with no options for a reasonable printed calendar that is not custom typed every time.

I should mention that my city has six troops and seven packs. One troop has never successfully recruited a cub from the aligned pack. Two troops don't have a pack as the ones with their COR closed down. Our pack doesn't "officially" have a troop as we're chartered by an elementary school PTO and it's a relatively new elementary school.

We all want each other to succeed, but it doesn't always feel that way. Recruitment time can be like a feeding frenzy.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

Has anyone heard of a national or other initiative to get units from the same COR to align together? I heard something at a district meeting about it. But I was not sure if it was just the idea of an individual, district, council or national?

The idea being that a packs, troops and crews chartered by the same COR should work together. It read to me like the old "feeder pack" concept being resurrected.

Just curious if anyone can point to any news article or other publication.

Custom Access DB .... But then I'm back to either

#1 - Maintaining data in two places (custom DB and SOAR) ... and confusion as we email the "printable" version between people to get it updated and printed as necessary. We so much wanted to move away from that as we have with emailing Excel files of email addresses.

#2 - Deleting the SOAR calendar data and not having available for use.

I'm sort of in a stuck position with SOAR and the calendar stuff. Not sure what to do. I think I'll try the custom programming Google scripts suggested earlier. But the whole frustration is we adopted SOAR to get away from that.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

basementdweller wrote: "We also print it as an agenda."

basementdweller... Is it nice and compact or sort of clunky looking? How many pages does it take to print out your yearly calendar?

Importance...

- for open houses

- for prospective parents

- for during PLC meetings

- for during committee meetings

- for parents that just don't read email or browse the web

- for scouts to keep in the handbook

Just thinking about it. It's really really needed. As much as our scoutmaster likes our web solution, he's grumbled for years at not having a good printed calendar to refer too after stopping maintaining a second version in Microsoft Word.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

FehlerI'm not sure how you got the Google web site to print six months of calenadr on one page. I can't see that option.

With Google Agenda layout, our calendar is printed as 10 pages.

The web page Google "Agenda" calendar is close when viewed on the screen. Each date is one line. If we could remove the horizontal line separting dates, it would compact futher. There are other issues too such as all the surrounding junk and multi-day events taking multiple lines.

But the Google "Agenda" - PRINT - result is bad. It creates five lines per entry. One for the date and only the date. Another line for times and title. Another line for where. Another line for calendar name. Another for created by. AND ... another for a blank line separator.

Plus a multi-day event is represented once for each day. So summer camp schedule would require a full page instead of just one line item.

The Google "Agenda" print result is ten pages for our troop. That's really not compact at all. Got 80 scouts in one unit and 50 in another. That's 800 pages and 500 pages of paper. 400 pages and 250 if double sided.

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We just need something like the following ... that we can quickly print out. SOAR can't do it. Google can't. Looking for an option

---- 2011 ---------------------------------------

Mon Jan 16 6:45pm Troop meeting location

Fri Jan 20 - 22 6:00pm Campout - Winter sports location

Mon Jan 23 6:30pm PLC leaders meeting location

Mon Jan 23 7:00pm committee meeting location

Thu Feb 2 7:00pm Roundtable location

Fri Feb 3 - 4 6:00pm Camp out - Northern adv location

Mon Feb 6 6:45pm Troop meeting location

Mon Feb 20 6:45pm Troop meeting location

Mon Feb 27 6:30pm PLC leaders meeting location

Mon Feb 27 7:00pm Committee meeting location>

(lined up by column ... can't figure out how to do it here)

I should admit I'm disappointed in the SOAR vendor. I've asked for this feature for four years and every request has been blown off and instead the new feature sets have to do with pretty colors or other esoteric stuff.

Does anyone have a good solution for producing a printable calendar? As much as I like our web vendor, SOAR, and had been in the past a huge proponent for them in our area, the web vendor has been a total failure for providing a printable calendar.

Our unit (both troop and pack) views our web sites as far more for the parent then the scout. In fact, the last thing our troop wants to do is send the scout to the internet for any troop related activity (registering for camp, checking attendance lists, ...).

For our Boy Scouts, parents and prospective parents, we'd like to be able to hand them a short (one page, maybe two) page calendar that represents the next year. This means every entry would need to be at most one line and briefly formatted.

We'd like to hand it out at courts of honor, at open houses and on request. Right now we are screwed. It's just too hard to get two or three different calendars to match up and do it continualy and have it accurate every moment.

So we'd like to focus on keeping all data in one place and having it print the calendars.

Is there another web vendor with this capability? TroopTrack.com looks very promising. We are tempted to switch if they work out. But I'm just not sure.

Any constructive suggestion is welcome. We are really desparate for a solution.

Twocubdad wrote: "From the troop's point of view, we need to consider that Eagle projects are now fully troop functions, with the leaders ultimately responsible, two-deep leadership and tour permits required, etc. That was not necessarily the case with the old guidelines. As such, the troop leadership has a responsibility to know what is going on. Certainly health and safety is a concern, but I'm not necessarily going to commit troop resources to an activity without some plan in place. "

Hmmmmmm. I need to think thru this. In our troop, Eagle projects have never been coordinated or even discussed during leadership meetings... except announcing someone passed his EBOR. They don't show on the troop calendar. We support but have never kept them on the radar. It's fully a scout responsibility. In fact, we sometimes get frustrated when an Eagle candidate schedules a work weekend on a weekend we've scheduled a camping trip.

The new eagle workbook on the last page does say under risk mgmt: "Projects are considered part of a units program and are treated as such with regard to policies, procedures, and requirements regarding Youth Protection, two-deep leadership, etc." I interpret that for policies and processes and to make sure everyone knows the BSA safety sweet sixteen applies. Not a statement that the troop leadership needs to be involved.

I don't see any further guidance in the GTA, G2SS or eagle workbook. Hmmmm.....

I just don't know yet.

I'd prefer it's a scout responsibility and not have the troop leaders hovering over his project for process compliance.

I just don't know yet.

AvidSM: I just re-read section 9.0.2.8. I had scanned it before without absorbing it. Wow. Nicely worded. I love the admonition to keep focus on the eagle requirement intent (lead a project giving service to others) and avoid technicalities and avoid making "object lessons". Incredibly well worded sub-section. I've seen way too much scouting enthusiasm killed by "object lessons" that declare failure from successes.

Mad Max: I'm just learning too and had to re-read that section a few times. I think AvidSM's interpretation is correct and not loose at all.

The "only" applies to using the official BSA eagle workbook. Districts and units can't say ... oh we've thought thru it and made changes that we feel are necessary. So here's the workbook you will use on your project. "Only the official workbook" is the key phrase. The wording following "only the official workbook" backs that up.

I see nothing that says a scout can't record more information elsewhere. For most projects, a detailed diagram, schematic, timeline, shopping list, time and attendance records, volunteer scheduling, donation list and such will be needed. Letters will have to be written. Invites sent. There's a lot of paper produced during an eagle project. For anything done in life, a plan occurs. It might be just in your head or written down. Eagle projects are significant work and, as such, planning occurs and records are created.

So when the EBOR evaluates leadership, what do they look at? Probably the SM's signature is good. But if they want to understand, bringing any records might help. Though the final plan can't be required, can other records be required? Not sure yet. The GTA section 9.0.1.5 does say to submit attachments. But that's vague.

It's just that the scout is not "required" to create a final plan. BUT ... he's still responsible for the topics listed in the final plan as he owns and leads his project. You can't lead a project with addressing the final plan topics. So it's natural that an EBOR will try to understand how he addressed those as part of leading the project. Seeing evidence of that leadership is important.

So the big big big challenge is if a scout produced no physical evidence of leadership (paper documents) other than the proposal and final report and pictures. The EBOR is only left with the EBOR questioning. If that questioning does not feel sufficient to the EBOR members, what happens? It might be approval, denial or suspension with a request to supply documents and evidence created during the project.

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I told our current candidate to archive everything. Print out computer files, emails and web pages. Three hole punch paper and put it in a binder. Tape in receipts. Keep it semi-organized. Use it as the story of your project.