Gone

The post from @@andysmom above has me thinking. We hear so much about good districts and bad districts. I live in the latter and it has been that way for a while. They live for the good old boy/girl network, they only want stuff from units, they don't provide any UCs. When they do provide UCs they come around asking for stuff, not offering to help. When they *do* help it is no where near effective or wanted. They seem very self-involved. RTs are nothing more than a waste of gas and time. Stuff gets printed out which could be sent electronically. In short, these districts are a waste.

I'd be interested in hearing what "good districts" do? What makes them effective? Why are they valuable and worth the time to attend or get involved in? What do units get out of them? If you are a stable, high-functioning unit, are they still valuable?

I'm not familiar with the term, 'Field of Valor."  Where does that come from?

Army and Marine Corps manuals. Means the blue field with stars.

Nobody in a non-profit or charitable organization should be paid $600,000.  It's wrong.

In all corporations, people who make that kind of money are on the hook for GENERATING a sizable portion of income for that organization. If you are not a profit center in an organization, and you are making THAT MUCH, you better darn will be introducing ideas and programs that are 1) getting you new clients, 2) streamlining your costs, 3) cutting waste or expenses, or 4) being innovative in the areas of R&D. If you are not doing any of that you won't last long.

If these guys are doing any of this -- which membership numbers, clunky IT systems, rising costs and poor quality service suggests they aren't -- I find it hard to believe these guys are "worth" that much in salary.

Add to that if these guys live in the DFW area, you can live 30% cheaper than most other metro areas, so $600k gets you a VERY good lifestyle. 

Reviving an old thread.

 

What flag retirement ceremony does your unit use?  Everyone has a different one.

We do the following:

• Build a bonfire and let it burn to hot coals.
• We then separate the Field of Valor from the Stripes using a special razor.
• We then burn the strips first and then the Field of Valor.
• During the ceremony we have a series of readings while we burn the Stripes.
• When we burn the Field of Valor we play taps.
• The coals are folded over the burning remains and the coals are allowed to die out during the night (yes, we have an honor guard of two adults and several scouts camping near the fire to make sure it is contained. The next morning we spread the coals and douse with water, then cover with dirt.
• This is done privately as a troop on private land. We try to follow LNT where we can.

So I just went poking around in the training section for my unit.  Found a couple of problems.  Saw a report that said 80% of my leaders weren't fully trained, which I was sure was wrong so I dug a little deeper.  Turns out that, for Committee members, only E-Learning Committee Challenge is counted by the system as qualifying, so if you took it in person and/or prior to there being an online course, you are listed, at least for the my.my.my.oh.my system as not being fully trained.

Not just e-learining but that is what BSA considers "fully trained". So you can have a WB committee member who has a Silver Beaver and all sorts of other training, but if they have not done the Troop Committee Challenge, BSA does not consider them trained as a committee leader. To make this easy we require this training every January for new parents. Makes it easy later on.

The other weird thing I found was that there is only room for nine courses in the reporting fields, you can look someone up using my.scouting.org Training Validation and find 6 or 7 pages of training course competed, but in the .......  interface the magic number is always nine.

Easier just to have them send you their print out.

The first problem only bothers me because it makes a tool that could be useful --- a quick snapshot of where you stand with training --- and makes it useless.

That report is designed specifically for units and districts to report up "trained" leader stats as defined by BSA, as well as YPT adherence for registered adults. It could be a lot better but for what it was designed to do it accomplishes the task. I agree they could give this more functionality.

The second problem bothers me more because I'm concerned that the full listing of training may become hidden away and inaccessible.

Agreed. It should be an easy fix since it is just a report writing data to a page. Arguably they should be able to write as many fields as possible (all training or specific training) to the output file.

Now stepping on my own toes, I do recall that one of the Troops in this area does to a lock-in style camp out with the Webelos as guests.  I'm not sure what, if any, Den leadership needed to remain for this - so maybe it is not an actual requirement.

I suspect a lock-in overnight would be treated like a camp out with the troop. Cub leaders would need to be around.

 

My priority is to avoid boring and repetitive flag ceremonies.

 

BSA seems like those type of ceremonies since there are so many of them.

You *can* have flag ceremonies that are crisp and not boring and well-done. By their definition, such ceremonies are repetitive. I think the new Honor Guard concept is a step in that direction.

http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2015/01/27/honor-guard-patch/

EDIT: You can see one council decided to make this a program and make it more repetitive and uniform by having the BYU Air Force ROTC help train the crews.

 

So, what say ye?  When do you stand and roll up your sleeves and when do you leave?

I like to have a five year plan (road map). I like to have critical mass (enough people to make my efforts worth while). I like to have back-up help (e.g., other adults helping). I trust that inner voice that tells me when to give up or press onward. If that voice conflicts with what the boys need, I try to find the boys another option (i.e., another place to go). I never leave the kids high and dry.

So we had a sign up for Scouting event at our local municipal airport with a tour of the planes, facilities and a fly in from a local medical helicopter team.  The problem is we only had about 3-5 newbies.  The rest were scouts already in the pack and their parents.  The DE walked away that day with 2 new apps.  The school district doesn't do "flyers" as handouts, they only send them electronically, email to those in the school district that have email and the DE wasn't able to "boy talk" to all the elementary aged boys, just the first graders, so now I am wondering what have you all done in the past that was successful?  Not looking to recruit a whole new pack, but would like to think there are more than 2 families in our school that are not in scouting that are interested.

Partner with a local scout troop and do something. We help a few local packs with stuff. One we did a mock PWD. The other we launched rockets. Another we did archery (professional range). Another we just did scoutcraft.

Probably too late for '16. Maybe next year.

@@SeattlePioneer, you get a -1 from me for a crappy title. We don't need more BS in the organization than we already have!

The 2014 increase was announced in September 2013, wasn't it?

http://www.ncacbsa.org/news/138293/Membership-Fee-Increase-in-2014--UPDATED.htm

How of his homework or projects at school do you do for him? Hopefully the answer is zero. Scouts should be no different.

Unless he's just crossed over I'd leave us to him but with your guidance.

I always had good luck with Eagles because they know scout skills and have a general idea of the boys side of the program. They are much more patient with the boys because they know there is more to scouting than leading and advancement.

Barry

My experience has been the opposite. They can't stay out of the boys' way and need to be kicked in the butt to volunteer for the tough jobs.

A fee hike and a policy change. Sure I bet they're just that silly to do so.

@@ALongWalk I'd find out what your units need and offer to help, rather tha doing the same old thing or pushing what council wants you to do.

[reads as he fills out forms for MBC, ASM, district volunteer, school volunteer, driver's ed teacher, etc.]

 The present one is bought in quantity at the ScoutShop, and is smaller.  The Scouts notice this. Maybe someday they will want to design their own.  

We had a rather energetic old time scouter do the same. Just could not get the scouts to wear them. go to any troop in our region and it is about 80% or more who don't wear them. Every year or so we get someone who tries to vote them in to the standard uniform, always fails by a huge margin.

Okay I see your points except for joining BSA. In his letter he asks Catholics to look at other youth groups

 

I can't speak for him obviously, but I think his purpose was to distance the church from Scouts and offer options more in line with the church's teachings. He wanted to send a message to BSA that they made the wrong decision. I suspect most scouts in those troops were not Catholic. I know in our CO most in our unit are not of the same affiliation. I suspect the same is true for most units (except LDS obviously).

I bolded part of the second sentence above which I think is a misunderstanding of the policy. The troop does not invoke a membership policy, the CO and National do. So the parish or school sponsoring the unit still selects volunteers of their choice. Maybe his concern is with adult volunteers in troops outside of his control?

 

http://bismarckdiocese.com/news/letter-from-bishop-decision-on-boy-scouts-of-america

I think he purposely acknowledged the relationship between the CO and BSA in the way he did. He's basically saying that the church will not be part of BSA. BSA will go on. Church members can join and participate if they like, but BSA now owns those units formerly associated with the church. He's severed the responsibility for those units and put it back on BSA. 

BSA won't get rid of the Class A. They make too much money off apparel.

...and BSA wants your troop data? ROFL.

You'd think a system based on BSA ID would be linked to your membership and training records and would be available to national, district and council for validation.

Yes let's let it prevail. My healthcare hasn't been the same since obamacare. My costs have gone up, my premiums have gone up, my choices have gone down and I have less money.

But by all means let's take care of everyone because that's what America is about. Meh....

Pope Francis has removed bishops. We will see if Bishop Kagan is reassigned in the coming year.

He's removed bishops that have overspent or have harbored or ignored child abuse. Kagan's move is seen by many as reducing the exposure of children to issue not currently supported by the church. Unless Francis is going to announce support for the gay life style he'd be hard pressed to justify removing Kagan on any other grounds.

Our DE is MIA. Too busy trying to get cherry council role to care about district ops. Our training chair is good but too overworked to handle such things. Best handled by the unit with the training chair signing, then the unit purchases and awards.

Do you wear one?

Nope. No adults do. Been a tradition in these parts a while.

We go out of council for adventure. Other reasons are program, facilities, staff, travel and cost.