MattR

Welcome to the forum, @Eloisefig. That's certainly no fun. It sounds like you've already made up your mind and I can't blame you. Good luck. But I'm not sure how much better luck you're going to have elsewhere. It seems to me that every troop I know of is struggling. Anyway, I few observations: In your meeting with the SPL and ASPL you dumped a whole lot of new ideas on them that they likely don't understand if they've never seen it before. Babies don't take smaller steps then older children, they stumble around and crash a lot. Sometimes they need to be caught before they crack the

I don't see the BSA ever having to deal with this problem because there doesn't seem to be a benefactor that could sign off on such a project. Nobody in the school district. It's great that this scout wants to unban books, but it's not a service project that helps specific people. Something about working with others to solve a problem rather than just working on it alone sounds better to me. And yet it does make me want to read Slaughterhouse Five. I don't know how I missed that one. I went and found a synopsis and think it would be a great read.

@ramanous , the most important one for me is whether the older scouts are looking out for the younger scouts. If the younger scouts don't look up to the older scouts then the troop will develop all sorts of problems from lack of participation, young SPLs that struggle while older scouts stay home, a lack of team work and just a real self centered attitude. The term scout led really is too vague. What most adults think of scout led is scouts making plans. But leadership, good leadership, is all the little things like including the shy scouts and encouraging those that are struggling. It's

@Maboot38 , you seem to recognize a problem and aren't willing, or more likely, know how to deal with it. You have an adult that is driving off scouts. This has nothing to do with titles. This is a people problem. Something needs to change, which you recognize. The options are he backs off on his own or you back him off. You're the SM. He's messing up your program. You have a vision of how this should work (and it sounds good from what you've implied) and he's hindering that. You need to decide whether the time it will take to change him is worth it. If so, great. If not, he needs to go.

I'm hoping you're wrong. Last night I found out our council has only 2400 youth registered. Our district, ten years ago, was larger than this. We used to have a pack in every elementary school (15 or 20?). We're down to 3 or 4. I think the packs are done folding but the troops are in serious decline at the moment. Our troop, which has always been considered strong compared to neighboring troops, is in serious trouble while 2 other troops have folded. If it weren't for a half dozen adults in our troop that no longer have kids in the troop, ours would fold. The common thread in all of this

Soros is to blame for the downfall of the BSA? That's a new one. I think I'm done here. This is a waste of my time.

Sure, but something about being prepared keeps poking the back of my gray matter. I have noticed that nay sayers jump out of the woodwork whenever a new idea is proposed. Understanding how, for example, the UK does this could help.

@Eagle94-A1, while a lot of us have bad stories, your council is the worst. Just to balance things out a bit, don't forget all the threads we see here about bad scout leaders. I once asked why we didn't have a commisioner and the answer was that we had one of the best troops and they trusted us and they had much bigger issues with out of control drama, drinking, etc in other units. @5thGenTexan 's troop is probably not too far from typical. Anyway, these are the things that we have to work around. None of the issues with a bad council are nearly as bad to a unit's program as not having pa

Welcome to the forum, @TimMiller. It's a great camp. At least for the past 10 years the volunteers taking care of the cabin ask for donations of money or material be given directly to them so they actually get it. Anyway, we ran our summer camp there this year. It's great. I think the council now takes care of the $99 payments. I forget the name of the guy that likely took over from Holm, but he was the best council exec I've seen.

@welcome to the forum, @Prime00. My suggestion is ask your scouts what they want to do and give them some options to get away from this troop. Find another troop, start a troop so they can get eagle, ... This situation is toxic.

Wow, the scouts run afoul of a bird sanctuary. So much irony to choose from.

Looking at it from the other side I'm not surprised. They don't have the numbers so, rather than adjust their budget they charge CITs. Summer camp itself is already North of $450. This is why we put on our own summer camp. And the price was very close to $100 per scout and adults paid nothing. That has its own cost, in time, but it was fun.

We rarely have cell service in the mountains. If you have service you're either on a peak or, possibly, at a trailhead. I'm glad they figured it out. Also glad the other hikers came by. A GPS that can mark a point seems like a useful idea. Does all trails allow you to mark a point? Also there are GPSes with emergency satellite communications. We rent them when we go rafting because the canyons are not only far from signals but far from people.

Every. Single. House. Project.

Yes, it's miserable but they got to go home. Nobody got caught in the hurricane. All I found was that 23 people across all of S Korea died due to heat. The scouts did okay. Going to the hospital for dehydration or eating bad food is not fun and a lot of scouts are angry at someone, but that's not the same as trauma. Money can be replaced. I'm not saying all was fun and good. Certainly there are 40000 upset people. I feel sorry for them but this won't get fixed until a lot more is understood. There are a lot of events that led to this mess. The S Korea scouting organization is only