Lisabob

I don't know - I see the benefits of online training in that a) quality is consistent (I've been to some dreadful in-person courses) and b) it is convenient and c) people might actually do it. I hear what you are saying about wanting to preserve traditional training and I think there can be advantages in terms of building connections to other leaders in the area and learning from each other. But in my experience, with cub leader training especially, those potential advantages are seriously outweighed by poor quality of delivery. I know it isn't that way everywhere (and I'm sure it wouldn't apply to you, since you clearly care about this topic) but I certainly have seen a lot of it. Still, I am amazed at the number of adults I interact with in scouting who are not really on the internet (or who don't have easy access to fast modems). Many of those folks will still want to attend a traditional "class" so I don't think traditional training can or should go away. Maybe, though, having online training could allow your district to get away from "district training day" once or twice a year, and move to a model where you take your service directly to packs and troops as they need you, instead. Imagine doing a follow-up at a pack committee meeting, where everybody had just completed the online course, and you could all actually talk about it together! Now that could open up some worthwhile conversations about how a pack operates.

Let me ask a different question. Why is this guy a den leader? If he doesn't attend leader meetings and I am willing to bet he's not trained, is he doing a good job as a den leader? If he bullies other leaders and isn't willing to stick to the program, is he doing any kind of a service to the other boys in the bear den? How do the other families in the bear den feel about him bringing his younger boy along to everything the bear den does? Do they get to do the same with their other children who are not actually in the bear den? How has the boy been earning progress toward rank all year, without this coming up until now? I am not sure - are you the current Wolf DL? (if not, what position do you hold in all of this?) Do you award progress toward rank at pack meetings? If not, start doing so next year! And don't award to this boy, unless he shows up and meets the requirements. Then you won't be in a lurch at the end of the year because it will be clear he hasn't done a thing toward rank with his den all year long. Since things have come this far, I would say you really aren't in a great position to say "no" at this point in time, even though you would like to. But somebody needs to have a "come to Jesus" meeting with this dad about what is going to happen next year. His older boy will be a Webelos scout. The Webelos program is set up to start transitioning the boys to boy scouts and so it works differently than the younger cub program. It would be an imposition on everyone to continue to allow younger brother to be the den mascot, as it were, next year. And it would cause the problem Twocubdad describes, when the older boys are ready to join a troop in 5th grade, and younger brother in 4th grade is not. Talk to your committee chair, cubmaster, and advancement chair about this. Make sure you are all on the same page. Then go talk to the dad and lay out what you are, and aren't, willing to accept next year. If he balks, thank him for his service as den leader this year and let him know you'll have a different den leader in place for the Webelos program next year. If your committee chair, cubmaster, and adv. chair won't back you on this, wash your hands of it. Tell them *you* will not award the boy rank next year if he doesn't show up to your den meetings, and *they* will need to deal with this parent and his boy in the future because *you* will not. And then make sure everybody knows what cool stuff your den will be doing, that this boy could do too, if he were to show up. Bottom line: he's only bullying you because you are allowing him to do so. Stand up! (And yes, I've been on the receiving end of same - it doesn't get better on its own, as I'm sure you know.)

Yes, a parent could go to the local scout shop and buy belt loops galore. Realistically, few will. And those few? Nothing is going to stop them from making sure their son "gets his." The belt loops can get ridiculous. On the other hand, some kids really enjoy earning them. I guess if I had it to do over as a DL, I'd have a fairly no-nonsense talk with parents about this early in the year. Tell them: belt loops are fun, but don't over-do a good thing. Let your kid lead the way here so that they have meaning for him and he doesn't come to resent being pushed. And know that, as a Webelos scout, he'll need to earn (or re-earn) certain ones so you might just want to hold off. Also, if you will do some as a den, let parents know in advance so they aren't chomping at the bit for junior to "get" those. Or, do what some packs do, and set a clear threshold for how many beltloops per month or year the pack will purchase. Those things can eat up an advancement budget!

How in the heck is the pack holding committee meetings with no chair for the last 6 months? Who is steering this ship? Literally speaking - who runs the committee meetings? The COR - well, there are many units who have a COR in name only. But who signs the paperwork when the COR's signature is needed? I think you have legit questions about the finances to start with (though there may be good reasons why the pack has such a cushion - as others have suggested, there are all sorts of possible explanations). But your most recent post really makes me wonder!

I think that there are valid concerns. I am going to suppose that when bear dad talks about financial difficulties, he is referring to families who are struggling with the basics, not families who have to cut back on their monthly manicure and latte budgets. For families in tight situations, cub scouting still offers incredible bargains. The regular activities are usually no- or low-cost, the sense of community and togetherness that is fostered is fulfilling, and the network of friends and supporters (for the kids, but also for the parents) really matters. Most packs, districts and councils have campership help for families who can't afford the cost of cub day camp or resident camp. Often, pack leaders need to be pro-active in finding this info and getting it into the hands of those who need it, but it is there. Yes, it is possible to go over-board with cub awards. There are patches, pins, or loops for practically anything you can imagine. The pack does not need to buy all of them. What we did - we had a couple of parents help make up red felt vests for boys who wanted them (you can buy these brag vests from the BSA for about $12, or you can make them for about $5 if someone has the time and talent). Then we awarded many of the "rocker" patch segments, which cost under .50 each. The pack provided the center patch upon initial registration with the pack, and the boys could add the rockers all around it, throughout their time in cubs. This was a good compromise - people who wanted to award lots of "bling" could do so for little money, and the kids really liked having a bunch of these on their vests. Here's a link to one pack's list showing many of these "segments" and how that pack uses them. Note that there are no formal requirements for how these are awarded, so you could alter these to suit your needs. http://www.dublinpack116.org/Documents/segments.pdf And here's a link that just shows pictures (in color) of many of the segments: http://www.libpack71.org/images/segments.jpg

I'm not too worried about scattered thunderstorms. They are a fact of life in the spring and summer. I would want to check with parents on a cub camping trip to make sure they know whether their tents are waterproofed! Nothing like waking up to a rainstorm inside your tent at 2am.

I think that this is uncommon, but not unheard of. It depends a LOT on how the pack really works and what their cycle of events is. Maybe they have some fall events that they pay mostly out of pocket for, so that in the spring it looks like they have a ton of money but by January, they're down to very little. Or, maybe, they are hoarding cash. It is true that registration costs are going up from $10/scout to $15/scout this year, and not one dime of that goes to the pack (or to your council). That also doesn't cover Boys Life costs which, I think, are another $14 or so. That leaves no money from registration fees of $30 for anything else at all. How well acquainted are you with the budget outlays in the fall? Things like buying rank books, uniform parts (hats, neckerchiefs, are fairly common items for some troops to provide), pinewood derby cars, etc. can add up quickly if the pack is large. Also in some councils, packs have to pay up front for product for next year's popcorn sale in September, and only get the profit in January/February. This can lead to what appear to be imbalances in the budget. While $9,000 seems a bit excessive, there could be explanations that make some sense. I think that if I were in your shoes, a polite inquiry to the pack committee is where I would start. Nothing wrong with asking "help me understand why we have this large general fund surplus?" Where does it come from and what are we saving it for? Once you get that answered, you will be better able to decide whether a dues increase is warranted.

I'd wear the troop/pack t shirt. It might be cooler than the official uniform. FWIW, son's jambo troop policy is they should wear BSA t shirts when not in class A, but no requirement that they all have the same t shirts.

I don't know how typical it actually is, but I can say without question that none of the troops in my area do this. Reality is that far fewer women than men do camp regularly with the troops I know, but that's certainly not a policy and it isn't that they are intentionally excluded. Supposing for a moment that the kindly SM in question really meant "you can come with us as scouters but not 'moms' " then I would have to point out to him that 'dads' can be just as obnoxious as 'moms' when it comes to over-the-top helicopter parenting (as any of us who have been involved with scouting have seen) and he might want to re-think his assumptions.

cheffy, I didn't realize that, either! I took another look at one of the brochures the other day - and I notice that it is being billed as the "second oldest BSA camp in the country." No idea whether that's objective truth or just local bragging rights (I understand there are heated debates about "oldest" and so on...). But yes, it is a lovely property with major structural improvements in the last few years. Also, I stand corrected - there are some Eagle-required badges offered. First Aid, Camping, and Swimming (I think that was it). I'm glad to see no mention of the citizenship badges, personal management, family life, etc. Those are important but shouldn't have a place at summer camp! cheffy, I hope you'll post some of your impressions once you hear from the fellows who worked staff. I don't think anybody in my son's troop will be going this year, but there could be interest in the future.

Vicki - thing is, this particular SPL has enough maturity to know that there is a power game being played - and maybe, not quite enough to know how to play it without being viewed as discourteous. He's quite content to say to the entire group: Here's what your CC wants me to do and here's why I think it is ridiculous and won't do it. Apples don't fall far enough from the tree sometimes ( ) but this doesn't always make for the smoothest course of action. Somebody mentioned in a completely different thread that adult-run tends to work out ok with young kids who don't know the difference and aren't ready to lead anyway, but that it fails with the older crowd of boys who are willing to ask pointed questions and challenge poorly considered "rules." That is what is happening here, in my view. Anyway, thanks all, for your input. It is always useful to see things from several different angles.

Well I am glad they announced this. One thing I notice - the touring BSA museum bus is in my state - THIS WEEKEND. Great to have advance notice of things like this.

The unit money earning app. is a good place to begin. Once you read the boundaries that sets up, contact your District Exec and tell him or her that you need approval to do an extra fundraiser. He or she will want to know what you're doing and for what purpose. They might also ask you why you didn't just participate (or participate more) in existing council fundraisers (like popcorn sales). You aren't obligated to do so, but they might still ask (they always asked me!). From personal experience, the only fundraiser I ever had turned down was when a pack wanted to use its BSA identity to raise money for an outside charity. If you have a reasonable fundraiser in mind that fits within the guidelines on the money earning application, you'll probably be approved. One thing to consider about "movie night" is that you might be infringing on someone's intellectual property rights unless you made the movie (which isn't what I think you meant!). With some exceptions, it isn't legal to, say, buy or rent a DVD from the store and charge admission to the public to watch it in your living room (or where ever) without paying royalties to whoever made and distributed the movie. Would you be caught? Probably not, but just a head's up.

"Camp staffs that are more concerned with their own enjoyment...the campers are just a pain in the neck " DEFINITELY a bad sign! Let me add a couple more. Success requires: Camp staff who go out of their way to ensure that campers are not only welcomed as "customers", but feel like part of the gang, like "insiders." That means staff has to actively befriend campers every week. Make sure out of council groups are included too. Camp staff has to be willing to be silly, and to encourage campers to do the same. Kids really have fun once they start letting down their walls. With scout camp that might be harder than with other summer camps because they all have their "image" to protect with their fellow troop members who know them from back home. So camp staff really has to lead the way here and make it known that at camp, people can relax a bit and be goofy. Camp staff has to be well trained. Poor staff = poor program = poor experience = poor return rate. Camp staff cannot be seen to be bickering among themselves or tearing down the program to the campers. Some people think being overly critical makes them look cool or gives them power. In fact it detracts from other folks' experiences and breeds disloyalty. Negativity of that sort spreads quickly and is detrimental to all. This isn't to say that honest problems shouldn't be brought up or dealt with. It is to say that staff shouldn't be kvetching to campers. If camp staff invites feedback, they'd better be willing to actively listen to the feedback they get. One time I went to a camp where, mid-week, they had a leader night. This camp had recruitment and retention problems and so they asked leaders what they liked and didn't like about the week so far. Leaders tried to couch things constructively, but every comment was angrily shot down by the guy that "built" the camp. I don't know why he bothered to have this leader night, if he wasn't prepared to listen to the feedback in the first place, but it left a terrible taste in people's mouths. Last one - good camps are well-organized. Have a good system in place for check-in and check-out. First/last impressions!

I didn't realize there would be such strong reaction to the SPL giving reports to the committee, in general. That has just been "the way it is" for as long as we've been associated with this troop. Nobody else does this? While sometimes I think the reports are a bit useless ("we went camping and it was fun"), it does at least offer the SPL direct access to a broader group if the PLC has issues they want to see dealt with. The current SPL has been emailing his report to the CC either the day before, or the morning of, the committee meetings (which occur at night). Now the CC says he wants them a month in advance so he can pre-approve them. He says he is concerned that the SPL will bring up issues that he doesn't have time to cover in his monthly committee meetings. I am wondering why we even have committee meetings, if the committee isn't willing to discuss issues of importance to the youth in the troop? The committee appears to be taking on an agenda and importance of its own? Mind you, I've been on this committee for 6 years, I've been trained as a troop committee member, and I've rarely seen committee agendas of such importance that it could really matter if we didn't make it through everything on the page. What am I not getting here?

Not that unbelievable! While this is in no way intended as advice to let it slide, you also must know that it is not uncommon for teenage boys to blow off their homework and dissemble about having done so. Many people go through that phase. Most live to tell the tale. As a parent of a slightly older teen than yours, I can attest that this is a cause of several of my grey hairs, though.

I don't know, Sctdad. True they are not offering Eagle-required MBs (and I'm fine with that, although one or two seem like good outdoor fits - swimming? environmental science?). On the other hand, they have a traditional 5-merit badge-sessions a day kind of schedule. And the MB choices are somewhat limited, and there don't appear to be any more adventurous options for older scouts who have "been there, done that." This isn't a complaint, necessarily. After all this is the first year they will operate and you have to start with something! But I wonder who they are trying to draw? It looks to me like the "audience" may be troops with a lot of young scouts, and/or individual scouts who can't attend their troop's week at some other camp and so want a close-to-home provo option. I guess if a troop were splitting up, so that young scouts went to traditional camp and older scouts went on a high adventure trip, this might also work out.

Does your troop expect or require an SPL report to the committee at each committee meeting? If so, do you expect or require the SPL to attend the committee meeting, in full uniform (despite the committee rarely wearing uniforms to such a meeting), to deliver the report? Is it reasonable to expect/require the SPL to submit a written report to the CC in advance, and if so, how far in advance? Can you envision a situation in which the CC would require the SPL's report a month in advance so as to ensure that nothing the CC didn't want brought up, was in the report? Stated reason: if SPL brings up topics that the CC didn't expect or want to discuss, it could throw off the CC's meeting plan. If you were the parent of the SPL and such an expectation was made known, how exactly would you respond? How would you counsel your SPL child to respond?

I agree with Brent too, unless there are reasons to expect trouble in advance. I've seen a few fellows who really require an adult shadow to stick to them, or they start to pull all sorts of crazy behavior. But it doesn't sound like that was the case here. Oldsm, some parents really have a hard time dealing with other people's kids, especially when it isn't clear (to the parents) what the community standard of behavior should be. So I think that's where I would start, is with this parent who went ballistic. Ask him for his thoughts on the situation and what his reactions were. Let him do his venting to you. Then help him understand that he scared another kid so much that now, that kid is unwilling to attend events where he is present. I bet he didn't mean to do that. Then lay out a path for him. On future camp outs, here is how we handle problems like this... And kudos to your SPL, by the way. Help him learn from this, too, that just because people are adults they don't always react correctly and yet, we should all cut adults some slack, too. In other words - help the SPL to see this as water under the bridge (provided it doesn't happen again), because mid/late teens can be very judgmental in their thinking.

Apparently things really do work differently from place to place. Youth staff? We didn't have a youth staff to speak of. Our day camp staff came largely from cub leaders and cub parents who staff each station. When I say "I asked" I do not mean I went up to each individual person and inquired "Are you from OA?" I mean, the day camp director and program director and I, all friends who had been through WB together, spent a good deal of time talking through how day camp staffing was going (among other things). I asked them - what about approaching OA for help? I got told we'd be getting no OA help. Now that was in a time when OA was pretty weak around here so it does not surprise me. SctDad's original question was - if OA could do some things to improve their image among troops, what should they do? And for me, one such thing is: have a public presence. If people who are not in OA do not know what OA actually does locally, then they will assume (maybe correctly, maybe not) that you do nothing. Not that folks in OA have to constantly toot their own horns, but there needs to be a way for people to see them in action or see the results of their action, on a local level. I hear this repeated in a lot of other people's comments here, too. ----------------------------------------------------- Mr. Irish - I hear what you are saying, but I think you would be doing the boys a real dis-service by seeking to limit them like that. Please do not let this short-term inconvenience (competing calendars on short notice) result in a long-term problem (artificial limits on OA eligibility and lack of participation in OA). May I suggest that, now that you'll have several OA members in the troop, you ask the boys to find out OA's calendar of events for the upcoming year and plan their troop calendar so that they don't have these kinds of conflicts again?

Yes I am in Michigan, and no, the economy has not suddenly improved. It is certainly a daring move. I don't recall hearing about any major donations that made this possible. But they have spent quite a bit of money renovating this camp in the last 5 years and in the last couple of years they've run some "trail to Eagle" and T-2-1 summer programs. These were 3-5 day programs that were apparently leading up to the opening of a full-blown summer camp program this year. So I can hope that this is part of a long-term strategy with budgeting to back it. I don't know how many troops will attend this year. To be honest, most troops around here already have a routine that includes other councils' summer camps, and that may take some time to change. Also, I don't think our council got word out early enough for this summer. A lot of troops probably already had plans to attend other council camps this year. My guess is that next summer will see better attendance, as long as the program is still there. But yes. A brand new summer camp program, opening up at a scout camp near me.

Scoutnut - how do I know? Because I asked. I guess the day camp director and program director might have been providing inaccurate answers, but I have no reason to believe that was the case.

Well, not exactly. Actually, the camp facility is an old one, but the summer camp program is brand new. Our council has previously not offered its own BSA summer camp, leaving all of the troops to attend other councils' camps instead. Considering all we hear about other summer camps shutting down and properties being sold, I thought this must be a pretty unusual step! From what little I have seen the program is somewhat limited, at least this first time out. Only 3 sessions, no Eagle-required MBs offered.

I write this as an outsider, in a district and council where OA has (previously) been rather moribund. I have never seen them at a cub event like a blue and gold or a cross-over ceremony. When I worked on cub day camp staff, I never saw OA youth involved. OA has been largely invisible to outsiders. At the troop level, I know the first several years my son was in the troop, OA either failed to schedule elections, scheduled but did not show up, showed up out of the blue without scheduling to conduct elections, could not be reached or did not respond to repeated requests for help with elections, etc. None of our boys who went through the ordeal actually became involved, partly because there was little to be involved in and partly because they really had no idea what OA was supposed to be. It is no wonder, then, that the prevailing view of OA was not terribly positive. More like, why bother. In the last 2 years things have gotten better and OA is now a more visible (positive) part of people's scouting horizons around here. But it takes time to overcome both the negative impression some people have developed of OA, and to overcome the total and utter lack of knowledge, involvement, or connection to OA on the part of older youth in the troop. Without predecessors who could come back to the troop and spread enthusiasm about OA, a lot of guys (and their parents, who provide transportation still) remain in the "why bother" camp and it isn't as if there are no other things competing for the time and attention of teenage boys. They need to be given a clear and compelling reason to get involved. To some degree, this has begun to happen. I hope this will continue to change over the next 2-3 years, but it really does take time and persistence before any sort of momentum becomes readily apparent.

"My personal take - whicj has no bearing in this case - school work should be done at school. Home stuff should be done at home." Maybe in elementary school. Middle school, high school, college? No wonder we fall behind the rest of the world at these levels in key subjects like math and science. You don't learn without practice. That's where homework comes in. Homework, as the name suggests, needs to be done at *home.* The "rule of thumb" for college courses is that students should do an hour of work (or, gasp, more) on their own, for every hour they spend in class. Realistically, few are prepared for this as college freshmen - which I now understand better for having read this thread. We are not helping prepare youth for independent learning or independent responsibility by coddling them and telling them that all their work should be done at school. Set the bar a little higher!