moosetracker

Well your PLC will gladly welcome the 15 year old daughter !

Yeah, but you are infering your situation in this not looking at has been written, you are talking of a dying troop, therefore you are talking of a troop very, very hard up.. What has been described here is nothing about a troop who is hard up for leadership, or even a parent who can not go as a leader without bring his son. There is no statement of "without me the troop can't go, and I have no one to care for my son. Just as plausible is Mommy is sitting at home eating bonbons while Daddy takes sonny off to an outing meant just for older boys. The only reason why is that it seems like a per

~~Bombs and Shields Activity Instructions: 1. Everyone stands in a defined playing area. 2. Leader explains that there is a bomb that will explode in 2 minutes and the only way to avoid the blast is to have a shield between you and the bomb. 3. Each scout secretly chooses someone else that will be the Bomb and another scout that will be the Shield. 4. On 'Go' signal, every player attempts to move so that his Shield is between himself and his Bomb. Since everyone has chosen different Bombs and Shields, everyone is constantly moving and no one ever 'wins'. ~~Copycat Colle

I agree jblake.. Amazing how many people have made a troop outing into a Pack family campout.. Totally unfair to the boys in the troop, both the ones who want to get away from their family and their family tags along, and the boys whose family doesn't tag along and they still have toddlers biting him at the ankles because Sammy & Johnny brought their families with 3 and 4 year olds in tow.. That troop would need to be very, very hard up for Adult leadership to ever accept falling into this type of disarray. Our family didn't have younger children as my son was an only child. Still whe

Sign up for counseling a few merit badges, or all 134?? Don't laugh, I have heard of people who have come close to it.. 50 or 75 of them at least.

Hmmm.. Interesting.. I know in the past what your council registrar said was correct. I know I use to get the District Roster and all the membership numbers were all in a consolidated grouping of numbers of the council handing out their parcel of numbers.. But, I had heard that that was changing, due to the on-line training system.. But, maybe that change is taking National it's usual 5 or 10 or 15 years to roll out..

Tiger, Bear & Wolf can not camp except at Pack campouts.. Webelos can do Den camping and can camp with a troop as a guest, but the troop has to invite and welcome them.. Here with Webelos our troops will not let them stay without a parent, but the Webelos can Den camp without all parents. Not sure if there is some sort of National rule, or just something Troops have created around these parts.. Here is a chart of what is Age Appropriate for each rank. http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34416_Insert_Web.pdf In the outdoor skills you will find little a tiger/wolf/bear can do. C

Some guys do get emotional with this if it means that much to them. My husband is fine with cub scout crossovers, but he sobs at each and every Eagle ceremony be it his son or some other kid, and he goes to plenty of them both in our troop and just by being invited from boys in other troops being the District Advancement Chair. Many boys have asked if he would do something at the ceremonies also, be it the MC or just a reading or whatever, he respectfully declines because he knows he would get emotional and not make it through whatever he was asked to do. He doesn't cry at weddings thoug

One thing I suggest for all units who have routinely been picking up the tab on Adult Leader Registration and are now thinking of dropping some of their adult leaders from the roster to cut cost.. Let those you are planning to drop know that is what you are doing. They may have a reason they want to stay registered, give them the option to pay for it if they wish. I know when I was in the Pack, they paid my registration one or two years, then dropped me off the charter without informing me.. When I went to the troop with my son, I said I had x amount of years in scouting and it was a $1

How do you STOP people from leaving?? This isn't a prison. And with their 'holier then thou', heavy handed (not to mention against policy) methods, not only will they loose people, they will not attract new people either. I would think their policies probably attracted an abnormal 'holier then thou' membership, and when BSA changed policy that did not enforce it, the people their attitude attracted are now fleeing to where they can still get that strict authoritarian rule.. Don't know why though.. Dollars to Donuts, even when the acceptance of homosexual youth kick in next year, your counc

My old unit would pay for your training costs.. I rarely thought about going through the process of being reimbursed. At least it sound like your committee voted to reimburse rather then pay for it up front. We had to do that somewhere down the line, when the unit agreed to pay, so people signed up without thought, then didn't bother to attend.. People didn't have to think too hard if they had the free time, and/or on the day just didn't feel like it.. And it wasn't their wasted buck, so they didn't care.. It ended up as totally wasted money for the unit.. Rule got changed real quick, to

Scoutmaster Jim - you need 3 on committee.. Perhaps for a troop the Advancement Chair should be your 3rd paid seat. At least if your troop runs the Advancement Chairs position the way our troop did, he had about the same amount of direct leader contact as the ASM's did. He was the one then went to see to figure out MBC's in the local area and to turn in blue cards. Also although the older boys did most of the Advancement of the youth, he played a part in the guiding of the older boys if they were too easy or too hard with their expectations.. Perhaps you as SM do all of that though.. Our SM a

Again, your talking about people who want to be a part of scouting.. If you have a bunch of parents who want everyone else to do it for them, and you are pushing someone to step up, the $25 is just and extra reason why then don't want to do it.. Right now, the lack of Adult participation is what will make or break this pack, we may not recharter Dec 7th due to not enough people stepping up. When you are looking at it from that perspective then Adult Leadership is worth using Pack funds on. Way more important then if the boys get ice cream, or the pack pays for them to go to the local hockey g

Yeah, I would let them sit on the BOR.. I would still take my active committee members, but we just aren't registering you because of the expense.. Over a parent that is not involved.. Basically the wording in the Advancement gives you the wiggle room to use non-registered parents.. Do it.. Especially if you know they are active enough in the troop that they know their stuff. Believe me, Council will not double check to come back and tell you that you have over used this option. As stated, doesn't matter that they are not there all the time. For my piece of mind, I would register direct c

You can't possibly mean Scouting as it was understood by Baden-Powell: Proficiency Badges that measure a Scout's current proficiency in Boy Scout skills only? Bad idea! That would attract boys who like camping, in the same way that basketball teams attract boys who like basketball, baseball teams attract boys who like baseball, football teams attract boys who like football, and soccer teams attract boys who like soccer. The Merit Badge system is designed for adults with a marginal interest in Cub Scout outdoor skills for teens, but seek to make up for the shortcomings of the pu

This is just me personally. I am running the same issue.. It is great if you are a Pack/Troop who have an abundance of volunteers, I have been in units and cheerfully paid my own dues.. My pack is still pulling teeth to get enough volunteers signed up so we can recharter.. Asking them to please, please, please take a position.. Then turn around and say "By the way that will cost you $25".. But, we don't have scouts/parents selling popcorn or volunteering to help with any other fundraiser.. So funds are also tight.. Personally, my feeling is to charter all direct contact leaders, (maybe n

Well, I am fine with everyone pay for food.. What burned me was when they stopped allowing us use of the camps for free to do training.. Now, I have to work hard to find something that will allow us free to very, very cheap that is not scout property.. I would rather donate $25 to a Mason organization for use of their facility then pay $125 for the use of scout property.. I could understand if a paying customer came first, and we got bumped or moved to the not so nice location.. But, charging us a high price when we could be training 1 or 25, was ridiculous.

You can't possibly mean Scouting as it was understood by Baden-Powell: Proficiency Badges that measure a Scout's current proficiency in Boy Scout skills only? Bad idea! That would attract boys who like camping, in the same way that basketball teams attract boys who like basketball, baseball teams attract boys who like baseball, football teams attract boys who like football, and soccer teams attract boys who like soccer. The Merit Badge system is designed for adults with a marginal interest in Cub Scout outdoor skills for teens, but seek to make up for the shortcomings of the pu

Agree with qwazse.. The 134 Merit Badges is not for someone to do them all, they are there to give you options to have elective merit badges in things that really interest you.. Although I was happy to see the Cooking MB become required, I did think that a good change, I was not happy to see it reduce the number of elective MB's the scout gets.. I am someone who thinks the 3 Citizenships should be merged into one MB. I kindof look at the Merit Badges of similar to College course. There are courses you are required to take for your chosen major, but then there are electives where you have th

I wasn't sure how it was done, but there was a kerpluffal with our troop when a parent did this also. But, I think it was due to the scout store not following protocol, and there was something our Advancement chair did he shouldn't have.. So there was something that there were checks and balances in place, but the scout sneaked through do to some dropped balls (and very manipulative parents, because they knew they were sneaking something through)..

Glad to hear he is staying in for a while, hopefully he will have time to learn what scouting is all about and learn the real merits that it is trying to teach. Strange though that his parents are going to let him stay, rather then planning a whole new bunch of hoops the poor kid must jump though in order to prove himself

Yeah, but lots of Councils do things that are not according to National rules. And when you have a bunch of holy-rollers they can be the worst. But, we also have the councils that have executives not putting donated money into the program, but use it to buy fancy houses and cars etc.. You have the ones that falsify the number of units and scouts they are servicing. I think I remember NeverAnEagle talking about this on another thread, but I thought they targeted just him personally, not his whole troop leadership. I think NeverAnEagle has a belief, but it is not a specific non-Christian rel

Seems like Those controlling your council should have stormed out to that Trails Life group if they are going to be all uptighty, and think the youth program should only allow Christian Adult Leadership.. Sounds like they would fit in there, but are trying to force BSA to be what it is not.

Well, if they want to come over and season all my cast iron, I'll call him an exceptionally good kid !!! True, but at 50+ years old, although a Defense team might try to point to an exceptionally bad childhood to defend the bad guy did what he did, because his mommy made him do it.. But a good childhood is really immaterial, even if it included boy scouts. There is a lot of years between A & B to have other experiences influence you.. So 4H is out, how about if their High School voted them "Most likely to succeed".. Or having been in a sport, don't sports claim to have good character d

I'm guessing that when you had only one 11 year old scout then a solo scout was too small to have an 11yo program.. Your 3 boys alone are large enough to start up a new program. If you have another from somewhere else you'll have 4.. So who ever does the picking will probably voluntold someone soon. From what I understand it can't be a women, so I guess it won't be you although you have worked yourself out of a job. I agree with Kristian any SM will do.. That must be a change since my son went through, for AOL everything for tenderfoot scout had to be learned or done except the SM conf