fred8033

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. ... 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. ... 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. ... 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. ... 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. ... 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. .... 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. ... 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.

Tampa Turtle wrote: "mostly to show that no one is above the work." Fully agree. Scouts lead and run the clean up. But there's no worse example than adults just sitting around while work needs to be done. Doesn't mean we do the scouts job. But it's not adults versus scout jobs. It's not we got our stuff done, so we can sit. Weight: Our troop only has a few things that are too heavy for one scout to carry. Such as a car port tent. Nothing is heavy enough to require an adult to help. And almost everything can be carried by one scout including the cook kits. Or two if it's bulky (not heavy) and a small scout.

On Sunday everyone is thinking about getting home. It's a huge distraction ... for scouts AND adults. Plus, adults are trying to make it to church and parents are hoping their kids get home to make it to church too. So the answer is DEPENDS... If a short drive (less than 50 miles), we pack, clean and eat usually a cold breakfast. Scouts are dropped off at their houses. Our drivers prefer it as it's less waiting and significantly less standing around saying goodbye. Plus the families appreciate not having to wait in a parking lot. And it removes the stress timing the departure perfectly to arrive at a certain time. I remember being in a troop that dropped everyone at church at a certain time. It was incredibly annoying to wait at camp until a specific time so that we could hit church at just the right time. Or waiting at church for the late parent. There's always two or three of them. If a long drive (over 150 miles), we try to make Sunday meaningful. Good breakfast. An activity, a unique/special tour or other excursion. Stop for lunch on the road.

Eagle92: Points well taken. I bet 95% of the district advancement committees nation wide are grumbling. I think that's also exactly why BSA added pages 21 and 22 to the workbook. Those pages are very well written.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

Twocubdad ... The examples you wrote could have been pulled directly from our troop. I know multiple over 18 year old excellent kids who gave up on advancement because of the horror stories getting Eagle projects approved. I know scouts who had their proposals bounced for ridiculous reasons. Now you can debate the emphasis on Eagle and the priorities and what not. But it should not take 3+ months to get a proposal approved. It should not take a 30+ page paper. I really like the new workbook because it gets the scouts away from the bureaucracy side and focus more on driving a service project for others and leading and taking responsibility for that service being done. IMHO, the workbook is dead on the mark. I also like the section that warns the parents about process changes and such. Really cool. Good luck both of you. It will be an interesting year.

papadaddy wrote: "I could understand it if there was a decrease in professional staff (and salaries) ... " Hmmm.... That raises a good question. Just curious. Not trying to incite something. How many professionals are in your council? Our council has 80 professionals listed on the contact page. It does NOT include scout store staff, but does include nine camp rangers for seven camps. Just curious.

WEB PRESENCE - For an online web presence... I partially agree with basement dweller. Custom web sites are obsolete and to be avoided. But critical features are lost if you go with a totally generic provider (i.e. Google or Facebook). Roster mgmt (patrol, parent/child association, rank, other advancement info). From roster, automatic mailing lists based on patrol and other info. Automatic newsletters. Security (parent level, leader, web admin). Most provide picture and file hosting. But there's still alot to be said for a site targeting scouting. Our unit uses SOAR. Calendar integrates nicely with Google, Apple and Microsoft calendars. http://www.soarol.com Another option is ScoutLander.com. They are okay but the SOAR has more very useful features. ADVANCEMENT - As for tracking progress and other details, TroopMaster is showing it's age. we use it only because we have many scouts that have 6+ years of advancement history in it. It's a big commitment to switch to another tool and the tools are evolving quickly. We use ScoutTrack.com for cubs. It works great and it's new TroopTrack.com looks sharp. BUT ... do we want to put six years of data in it? Or are we content to stay with TroopMaster. (This message has been edited by fred8033)

Quick correction. The applicable GTA sections are 9.0.1.5 and 8.0.3.0 (sub-point 8)

Mad Max: I was honest with my apologies. It's just one of my hot buttons. I always cringe anticipating the direction the point will go. Your points are on target and it will be interesting to see how things shake out. We all suffer from "magical" thinking at times. If a scout can get an approved proposal, I can see them not wanting to invest in more paperwork. Depending on the scout and the project, it might be okay. A detail oriented, five year SPL wanting to pull buckthorn? Sure, will probably go okay. Any significant construction project? No. The new process really escalates the importance of a good scoutmaster and good project coach that stay involved and watch what's going on. For our troop, that's okay. We'll gladly bite that bullet compared to the approval BS (not an abbreviation for Boy Scout) that was happening a few years ago. But I do fear for scouts and beneficiaries if that final plan is not done or done well. It's not a matter of the EBOR or earning Eagle, it's whether their service project is something they will be proud of and also useful to the beneficiary ... or just an ugly situation for everyone. Still though, I really like the new workbook and process. It seems like it lets the scout take ownership and responsibility for the results. I view the old jumping through hoops process to get an approval as trying to please someone and not necessarily as taking responsibility. I know plenty of scouts (and parents) who got approvals but spoke openly of their contempt for the process. That's not taking ownership or responsibility. That's just chasing a signature. And ya know the "scamming" scout and adults would probably have tried to scam the old system too. Anyway ... good luck. These conversations will be going on for years to come.