T2Eagle

Cubs can sleep with their buddies in a tent. they don't have to sleep with their parents. But setting that aside, if you're going to bed the same time an eight year old is going to bed than one of you is doing it wrong. Just like kids go to bed at home before their parents, Cubs should go to bed before the adults. My experience with eight year olds is rusty, but they usually can sleep through anything once they're out.

First, sleep in a tent by yourself. When I first joined the troop there was a tradition of the adults sleeping together --- picture five guys in one of those Taj Mahal tents. I also wasn't a good sleeper and heard every sound any of my tent mates made. A couple weekends and one summer camp and I had enough of that. I bought my own tent and told everybody I snored and didn't want to subject anybody else to that. After that get a good quality military style cot and a good quality sleeping pad sized to fit it, Cabela's or Bass Pro for the cot, REI or similar for the sleeping pad. I use the sleeping pad when I backpack but I have a back that can be finicky and I am indifferent to any snickers about setting up a cot every other time. Sleep is a health issue and you need to be aware of it for yourself as a leader as well as for your scouts.

OA, its elections, its importance, and how it's viewed, is wildly inconsistent and varies greatly from council to council and troop to troop. Our lodge isn't particularly strong and sometimes has trouble getting election teams to troops, and the quality of those teams is as inconsistent as you would expect for an organization run by teenagers. In our troop, the PLC schedules an election during April or May and invites the lodge to conduct it. As Sm I look at who is eligible and print up a ballot for the election team to use. I must admit I've never asked if anyone does or does not want to be on the ballot, and no one has told me they don't want to be. We don't perfectly track who is already a member so it's possible the ballot could contain someone who already is. I assume anyone who doesn't want to be on, or who is already a member, would just tell their fellow scouts. Other than when the SPL tells the troop what the general schedule is for the month it probably doesn't get talked about ahead of time.

Wisconsin has the best town names.

I have fairly bad asthma and so stay pretty far back and always up wind from camp fires. He really just needs to learn to do that. As several folks have said fires aren't really for warmth they're mostly for socializing. If you're dressed/equipped properly, getting close to the fire just causes you to either over heat or open your jacket. ETA, I also have found for kids with allergies that they may be OK under normal, at-home conditions where most of the air is filtered and or conditioned, but they have problems when they're outside for 48 hours straight like we are on campouts. Ramp up the OTC allergy meds: Zyrtec, Allegra, Claritin, etc. several days before a campout and keep them going a few days afterwards

Sign up and go as a leader. Scouting should be a years long journey. One of the surest ways to have that journey cut short is if the scout has a truly miserable experience early on. If your presence is necessary to keep his experience from being immiserating than you should be there. He may still not like it, scout camp can be a long week away from the things he knows he does like, but it's OK if it's not a great experience just as long as it's not so bad that he doesn't want to continue in scouts at all. DavidCO's advice was don't make him go. I would choose that course of action only if you believe that even your presence will not make it a miserable experience for him, and you of course are the best, albeit still an imperfect, predictor of that.

next door in Erie Shores, we don't have them either. Not sure if they're any more or less effective than any other fundraiser.

Where I Iive in Ohio that would be an almost unbroken trek past cornfields and suburbia, change in elevation maybe 20 feet altogether.

Interesting, but I'm not sure what the point of that was. The value of the medical form is knowing what history people have and being able to recognize their problems as they arise based on their history. When you're at the point where you're on the way to the ER most of the value of the form is gone. After all, the vast majority of us do not walk around with a completed medical form and ER procedures are predicated on that fact. There is some value to having a medical history available, especially if it's an adult that's unconscious or a kid who may not know his own full story, but again, the ER is set up assuming those things to be true. I had a scout helicoptered out from a campout, you know what nobody asked or gave a crap about --- his medical form.

RichardB , your replies are sometimes annoyingly condescending. The policy is easy to misinterpret, or more accurately easy to subject to multiple interpretations, when the first FAQ linked to at the end of your quote SPECIFICALLY contradicts it in at least two instances. Since the policy clearly is not meant to be universal than it is subject to interpretation: is the situation described by the OP analogous to a fundraising situation, to a merit badge counseling session? I think it looks very much like what a merit badge counseling session would look like: a registered leader and a parent, especially one who has undergone YPT.

I would treat each situation uniquely and not try to come up with some comprehensive "policy." If someone is being dropped off and picked up that sounds more like someone joining as opposed to a guest who comes with another scout. Not sure whether your biggest concern is the membership or the direct costs to the unit for whatever activities they're participating in. I would separate the two ideas, membership and cost; have the parent fill out the application without asking for any money, it should only take a parent five minutes or less to do so either as they pick up or drop off. Once the application is compete then you can talk about arrangements for payment. If they're not interested in filling out the application even without having to pay then I think you can become more insistent that continued participation is contingent on membership.

it's impossible to know whether the CO's insurance is sufficient as it stands to cover the additional liability of having a scout unit, or any additional youth group or activity, unless you know what they were covered for before and what additional risk they may now be facing, or whether for some reason the current policy specifically excludes coverage for scouts or other youth groups. The BSA does provide, as it says on the web page, primary liability coverage for all COs. But of course the devil is in the details and the web page doesn't say what the limits of that coverage are. You or the Church should be able to get that information, but then it's up to the CO to decide if they believe that coverage is sufficient. I would certainly get the council pros involved in the discussion if you can, and I would try to get the Church and the insurance person to provide some details as to what and why they think they need additional coverage. If the Church is insistent on obtaining coverage it feels necessary in order to support the troop, it would certainly be appropriate to find out what the cost of that is and consider ways to help the Church defray the costs.

I would have signed off on the requirement. If you wanted to turn it more technically into a "group of youth" you could always always offer some to the other scouts there. Most of my scouts are always willing to accept seconds.

Q: The Barriers to Abuse say that there must be two registered adults present for all Scouting activities and meetings. Does that include merit badge counseling? Fund-raising events? A. Yes. However, the parent or legal guardian of the Scout may serve as the second adult. This parent or legal guardian does not have to be a registered leader. I would say that the above Q&A isn't designed to cover only the enumerated activities of Fundraising and MB Counseling but is instead intended to cover situations that are outside of the standard troop meeting or campout, so yes what you describe fits within the parameters of acceptable YPT guidance.

Everybody has to be realistic about the limits of their resources including time and talent. If you cannot effectively be a leader for two troops than you should pick one and give it your all. If there are other good troops for your son but not for your daughters than that probably would lead you to enrolling your son in the other troop and putting your efforts into standing up your daughters' troop. Considerations like "other people will think we're the bad guys" or "scouting will die in our town" are probably not true, and at any rate beyond your control. Frankly, a troop with less than 10 scouts, or really any number of scouts, that's only camping three times a year should be consolidated into another troop that is more active and is strengthened by the addition of more scouts and families. Troops that don't camp are doing a disservice to their scouts --- and it's the scouts' well being, not tradition, not what council wants, not what will make other adults feel good, that should be the focus of every adult in scouting. ETA Advancement shouldn't be the main focus of your meeting, having a robust outdoors program should be. Advancement isn't the point of scouting, it is just one of eight methods to get to the point, without a good outdoor program you won't be able to use Advancement or any other method to achieve scouting's real goals.

I have to disagree with you here David. Membership in a parish is a specific thing. I had to receive special permission to belong to my current parish because I reside within the boundaries established for a different parish. We certainly frequently use the term parishioner and non parishioner, and although we NEVER require membership in the parish as a prerequisite for being a member of the unit, we do know in detail whether a scout or leader is a parishioner or non parishioner, including Catholics who are members of the unit but belong to a different parish.

We've had a few occasions to wear uniforms to funerals, including one scout and one scout parent. Assuming there are no religious reasons to think otherwise there is no reason not to.

The requirement for female leadership when female youth are present is universal, it covers all scouting activities not just unit activities. "A registered female adult leader 21 years of age or over must be present for any activity involving female youth."

None of this would have anything to do with court. There is no law anywhere that says that a minor cannot be alone with an adult: any adult, any gender, no relation. The rules we have are internal rules and only govern scouting activity, the worst that can happen for violating them is having your membership revoked. To the OP's issue: our district is like Jameson76, there's rarely face to face contact with the District Eagle Coordinator. This does bring up some interesting questions though. I would say the MBC meeting is the most analogous situation, and so EBORs, project committees where they exist, etc., are going to have to be aware that they either need to have female leaders present or ensure there is a parent there. This will be interesting when it comes to EBORs, in our district the candidate submits names of folks for members outside of whoever the district coordinator is bringing, that would put some responsibility on the candidate to nominate some female board members. In those unfortunate districts where it's the same group of old boys who comprise all the EBORs they're going to have to recruit some female leaders and open up their process --- probably not a bad thing for lots of reasons.

I don't think the OP is talking about litigation at all. His or her point is that with all the encouragement to report YP violations one aspect is not covered which is retaliation against the person who reports the violation. And this person is right, there is no explicit protection. So for instance, if you're a parent who reports a YP violation, even if the report is valid and the council takes action to repair the violation, both you and your son could have action taken against you by the unit in retaliation for doing the right thing and making the report. This is a real problem because it acts as a deterrent to other folks to make reports. To the OP, the situation as you describe it only mentions a threat of some sort prior to the YP violation report and not any actual retaliation taking place. This may be the distinction that the council is drawing and why they say it is a matter for the Chartered Organization. Either way the actions sound very wrong and should be properly addressed, I think you or the person threatened should in fact take the matter up with the CO.

The quote from the scout was "what I did was take a knee against racial discrimination." I would definitely not feel supportive of anyone taking the opposite of that position. As to political statements on the other side of the political spectrum, I have a few scouts who regularly wear MAGA hats to meetings and outings, we don't have a uniform hat, and I don't feel like I have much standing to object to their wearing them even though they are clearly politically partisan. A couple of them brought and flew a Trump 2020 flag at a campout. I did make them take that down from the flag pole, I told them they were free to display it on their tent if they wanted to. Of course at least part of their motivation for that was to tweek their liberal SM, but that's OK it's a long game and I'm a grandmaster.

A couple years ago we ran into this in Ohio. They got creative about cutting back on spring break, Easter break, etc., by the end I think we added one or two days so school ended on Friday instead of Wednesday or Thursday.

I just saw the Bryan on Scouting posting with 50 troops from 50 states. They also had a troop from Germany. Sorry Cburkhart, just like with voting, you guys didn't make the cut.🙂 Though I did see several other troops' pictures in the comments if you want to send yours in. There is a picture from Maine, and IIRC one of our posters talked about trying to establish a troop there. If so does he want to fess up to being the long haired hippy in the photo?

I welcome first year parents to attend some or all of summer camp, I view it as the best opportunity for me to train them. I'm explicit in my training, both in the run up to camp and after arrival: here's how things work, here's the hierarchy, here is the very limited role we as adults play in this process, and I'm not afraid to step in to counsel or correct behavior that doesn't fit what we discussed. It's no different from all the many times I've had adults at work that I needed to train and lead

Yes you're over thinking it. A check written to Troop 123, for $10 or $1000 is the same as a check written to ACME, a check written to CASH and handed to troop 123 is the same as a check written to 123 or ACME. Assuming that ACME is OK with it all. If someone wants to write a check, take it, write a nice note that says thank you for your donation of $xxx to Troop 123 on date XX/XX/YYYY. Send a note to your CO with copies of everything.