John-in-KC

SPL Warwik, WELCOME!!! First, Eagle92 said it: You are a one patrol troop, for now. Let's start from there, and work forward... (--) You do not have to have adults present to have a Patrol meeting or a Patrol outing ... do you all go to the same school? If so, have what we grownups call an "offsite" meeting ... at lunchtime. (--) Even if you don't have a common place M-F, make a place ... get everyone to go to an impromptu pizza and games party at the local pizza joint. The point: GET YOUR PEERS IN ONE PLACE AT ONE TIME, on their own volition. (--) It's going to take a bit of maturity from all of you ... but if everyone commits to working inside the grownups decision cycle, well, you quickly take effective control of the program. That means everyone is listening and feeding you what they hear ... then you have to process, get agreement to, and act on the information you receive. (--) Several of the posters have given you other good ideas. Run with those. Finally, a personal request. Grammar and spelling help sell your case! Please, take the minute, put your drafts on your PCs word processor and spell/grammar check them. Literacy matters in the adult world.

Moose, Google is a really wonderful tool. It took me all of 3 minutes to find two different versions of ACP&P online! Here's what is at the BSA website. It's the 2009 edition: www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/33088.pdf Here is what a someone put up on his own. It's the 2008 edition: scoutmaster.typepad.com/2008AdvancementGuideBook.pdf

moose, It's time to talk not to us, but to your Council Surgeon (there's a volunteer Doc out there serving as such). You need to find a pretty unique resource: A psychologist who understands phobias and swimming . You need strategies and approaches. He may need to talk out the why (and there may be a big why in his life). Good hunting...

Absent a legitimate special need, with all the approvals, the requirements are what they are. If the Scouts' family can get a psychiatrist/psychologist to document an irreversible severely debilitating phobia, your husband has a chance to get this through the COUNCIL Advancement Committee. Otherwise... Requirements are requirements. Have him talk to the special needs folks.

When General Peter Schoomaker was Chief of Staff, he mandated the Army was an expeditionary Army. The Color lives on the right shoulder, always, when he wears Army Combat Uniforms. He mandated that the Flag patch put the canton on the observers right (its own left), representing the flag moving with the Trooper ...

http://www.usarmystyle.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=26_28 http://www.uniforms-4u.com/Productimages/5290/big-u-customizable-us-army-acu-uniform-6209.jpg

My then-bride and I held our son back at K. He went through Scouting with his class peers (a year younger than him in age). He actually got busy in Scouting two years late, his Mom would not give him time his first year to go to Scout Camp. He ended up being the only Eagle from his year group. He earned Eagle at 17 years, 3 months, and then earned two palms before aging out. Point, you ask? It can be done!

Say what you will, at least B43 called what we were doing WAR. OBTW, the little fracas overnight between North and South Korea is a matter of no small attention to the United States. If you think Iraq and Afghanistan are black holes for $$$ (let alone the lives of our Troops), just wait until you see what real mid-intensity war looks like...

Kamakamelian, I have the funny feeling I know the Council you're in, based on the January recharter ;-) You really have three choices at this point: - Do nothing. You don't have to serve this Troop. Let someone else worry about the problem. - Take the reins, but plan to close the shop in short order. Arrange for the remaining three to transfer to another good troop, put the fiscal house in order, and return property to the Chartered Partner for disposition. - Take the reins and decide to rebuild. Put the two youth on charter, but let them know this is their last year unless they start doing the program. Get the adults out of the way. Get with the COR, and tell him that he (and the Partner) have to step up to the plate and do their part of leader selection and vetting. Recruit enough youth over the coming year that you have at least five after age-outs and drop-outs. Contact your District Commish. Tell him you want the contact data for your ADC and UC. Even with your experience, you want idea bouncers and neutral parties to help. Contact your COR/IH. Again, tell them you want them on board and reachable to you as a matter of routine. Option 3 is hard, but it has potential to be the most rewarding. Are you and the SM onboard with a common vision for the kids?

Neill, Allow me to be blunt. BSA is imposing ISO 9000 standards and terminology on its volunteers. This is metric, matrix management. I have a graduate degree in public management and I'm finding the data manipulation difficult for this recognition. If we are going to do this kind of management, we must give our unit leaders the tools to do the metrics without pain or strain. This is math. Math means computers, and computers mean ScoutNet. Most of the data on these forms should be crunchable when the unit uploads its recharter to ScoutNet. The data should crunch, and a new download should result: The Journey to Excellence worksheet.

ScoutNut: As a followup, I got an email Saturday from my District Commissioner. He in turn got it from the Council Commissioner: At the Heart of America Council board meeting on 11/15, the board approved a one-year extension for the position specific training requirement for Assistant Scoutmasters WHO ARE 18-20 years old.(boldface added) This is effective immediately, so those persons under 21 who are serving in ASM positions need not have the position required training. The Youth Protection Training would still be needed [and of course it can be done on-line.] Please pass the word. NN NN, Council Commissioner This does not change the training requirement for any of the other direct contact leaders in Scouting in my Council, which I linked to earlier...

As long as you can cover 2-deep and No 1/1 contact, what's wrong with Den Leaders' home? Sainted Mom, my Den Mother, did that 2 years of the three I was a Cub... She had planned occasional relief at other people's homes...

I have held a Federally issued identification card since I was 10 years old.. That was 40-something years ago.

As WAKWIB posted, in our District we have a church that sponsors, across two counties, the PRAY curriculum for youth religious emblems. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are welcome to partake. We run 8 sessions across 4-5 months. One of the things I like in the God and Church program, which I counsel, is we make worship, somewhere, anywhere, an element of the program. We get families in the door of churches to listen to God's Word. Our target audience is unchurched to minimally churched families. PRAY recognizes us as one of their highest producing programs in the Nation. The Heart of America Council is consistently first or second in the Nation for protestant youth religious emblems. My Roman friends conduct a parallel operation; I will have to check with them and see what their production is. We also use traditional methods, of folks working with Pastors and Directors of Christian Education to make sure Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and 4-Hers get opportunities to earn these emblems. I'm the resource person for my parish on this. Kids are learning about God. In many cases, they are getting their first systematic exposure to God. That's a good thing.

Barry... Appropriate? or Procreate? The only time I've heard of appropriation in animal sexual acts is the powerful male claiming one or more mates... Is that where you were going?

I work God and Church. I do it two ways: First, in the context of my parish's confirmation class. I know Pastor's curriculum. They cover 95% of the course material in what they do just by doing his stuff. I close the gap by having them go outside their comfort zone in worship. ... synagogue trip is pretty typical. A church in our District sponsors an annual program. I counsel there as well. Each kid, each session, has a 1/1 time with my partner or I. We go over what they've done in detail, in addition to doing group things, as we would in a middle school SS or youth group class. God and Church is the toughest, imo, of the PRAY curriculum. The two Cub courses, theologically, can be summed up in "I LOVE JESUS. NEXT!!!" They are designed for short attention spans of 7-10 year olds. God and Church requires the youth to have about a 40 minute attention span each time. It's not an outdoor curriculum item. It's not full of fun things to do. It's digging a bit into the Bible and pulling info out. I do counsel at a local college's annual merit badge day. I counsel Cit in World. In fact, I'm making my final prep now. My Scouts have to be prepared. There is no way to cover Cit in the World, soup to nuts, in 3 hours. They have very specific things they have to DO, and bring in. I use unit adults to look at the "DO" work. Frankly, about half the Scouts don't do the work. They do not earn the badge that day. I once was asked to volunteer at another districts' internal MB day. I was told to do Cit in World in 2 hours, soup to nuts. I told that DAC to find another counselor, as he was asking me to shortcut the requirements.

In other words, Philadelphia gets relief from paying $1M legal fees to the CoL attorneys ... (If Philly is like most US cities, a $1M hit on the budget is tough to absorb in the current economy. I'd bet a dinner at the Golden Ox Philly is self-insured at the $1M level...). Philadelphia gets $500K cash, which it probably needs. CoL gets fee-simple ownership. Yeah, I'd send CoL $20.

What Stosh said. My son, as a 17 year old and 18 year old, was already on camp staff at one of our two Scout Reservations. His summers were tightly scheduled with his staff job taking a huge chunk of his summer. He could not afford the time for a 10 day Scout Camp. A 7 day program was it; all or nothing. He provisional'd with a Troop in our neighboring Council twice; had grand times both! He took his ASM training that second summer.

Contact your State Legislator. As a Constituent, ask for assistance from the State law enforcement education resources (every State has them) to work with the kids in your unit ... even if it's train the older youth in the subject matter as trainers to the 11-13 year olds. The fact of the matter is the current economy means in some places, DARE and GREAT are at risk for budget cuts. Sad, but true.

To me it's about stewardship. I've seen organization that had too much reserve funds ... not necessarily Scouting, but non-profits. Those funds were donated to an arm of a charitable organization ... make no doubt, popcorn is charity. There's a huge donation element in its pricing. Dollars donated to charity need to be working, not parked. Now, what Gunny and Beavah said makes sense: Have a contingency amount to cover the big fundraiser crashing and burning. I've seen units have that cushion, I've seen others run not quite paycheck to paycheck. One thing I caution: The Chartered Partner is the franchise holder/licensee/charteree of record of a Scout unit (Pack, Troop, Team or Crew). We had a case on this board where a Partner, in dire fiscal straits, asserted their rights and pulled funds to underwrite themselves. Not Helpful, but it happened. It's a very good reason to keep the reserves a bit lean, though.

Financially secure, to me means the unit has enough money on hand to meet the next major payment: - Recharter - Camp payments - Courts of Honor - Capital reserve fund for FWT replacement of equipment (tents do wear out)... It also means the Scouts, and their parents, understand when they have to help with fundraising, or else pay dues and fees on time.

Contact your DE.

One of the stupidest things the Boy Scouts of America ever did was eliminate the Tap-Out. I will remember that moment of the Mulholland District, San Fernando Valley Council BSA, spring Camporee in 1970 to my last day. No namby-pamby little boy "Johnny, you've been selected..." for this no longer eligible to vote for age youth member of the Order of the Arrow. Bring the hand down on the shoulder... KA-WHUMPF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ask me how I really feel. I dare you...

perdidochas, The signature on receipt is a promise from the Troop to the youth member: - We have received your completed MB app. - We will cut an Advancement Report and submit your MB to Council. - We will buy you a MB patch and a MB card. (Yes, I know a few units that local make MB cards...) It's most emphatically not an approval. See Eagle 92s comments about 5 up from this.

Gunny, Sadly. It's called earmarking.