Twocubdad

I can't understand how this is a very common occurance. I know of only one time that this has occurred in our troop. A boy dropped out with only a BOR remaining for Tenderfoot and only a few requirements for Second Class. A year later, when his younger brother crossed over into the troop, he decided to give Scouts another chance. By the time all this worked out, he finished the Second Class requirements so we let sit for both boards at once. Absent some unusual circumstance, I would hope the unit leaders would discourage the practice. It seems to me the process is short-changed by allowing a Scout to do mutiple BORs at once. Why go through the time and hassle of separate conferences and review when you can knock out all three at once?

So ask your ranger buddy what he needs and restrict your contribution to that specific item or need. Understand that if you restrict your contribution to "camp maintenance" (or any other on-going budget item) that the total camp maintenance budget probably won't go up -- they'll just claim that "your dollars" were spent on camp maintenance. On the other hand, if you specify a particular item which is not currently funded -- like replacing the tents in campsite 1 or buying new archery targets -- the money goes toward those items. If you really don't trust the council folk, ask them to provide documentation once the money is spent.

I'm not yet to the point of making the plans you are, but I would have the same concerns you do. I've decided my support (time and money) are best directed at my unit. If I had a large amount of money to give away, I would probably make a restricted gift to our Chartered Organization (they own the 501©3 status) with instructions that the Scoutmaster, Committee Chairman and COR manage the funds to the best use of the troop and other units in the community. I'd like to see the money go to help individual boys -- uniforms, camp fees, even attending Jamborees and high adventure trips which usually isn't come with any financial assistance. I would trust the church, troop and the current individuals to handle the money according to my wishes. But if I had concerns, or if I simply wanted to spread the wealth, I might identify other stable, long-term COs in the district and set up small funds with all of them. Maybe some of the money goes to fund things you wouldn't have choosen personally, but most of it would. An easier route would be to set up a convential trust and appoint a couple like-minded Scouters at trustees. Sure, you could give the money to the council with instructions that it go to the campership fund (if that's what interests you). But we know how that game is played. New money going into the campership fund just means the old money gets re-directed to another use.

Following on to shortridge's comments, are there any commissioner functions which don't very nicely fit into the existing committee structure? Recharter to membership, Roundtable to Training, Quality Units to Program. We have a very large district and each of these subcommittees seem to do their jobs fairly efficiently with a handful of people. Membership committee has only a couple people on it, although they will recruit volunteers ad hoc to on Roundup nights. Of course, membership has a huge amount of help from the professionals, but so do the commissioners when it comes to recharter. A full complement of commissioners would be about 40 people for our district. That's nuts. In 10 years between the troop and pack, we've never had a functioning commissioner. Yet we keep getting hit up to recommend our unit volunteers to be commisioners. My current commissioner is a like that. He went through all the commissioner training and was bored to death with the job of a unit commissioner. He does boards of review for the troop now. My suggestion would be to dissolve the commissioner corps, but that will never fly. So instead I would parcel-out it's functions to the district and council committee. To avoid the politics of totally disbanding commissioners, I would make them a sub-set of the district committee and give task them with visiting every unit a couple times a year (which could be done with 4-5 guys in an average sized district) and for maintaining rescue teams which would get help struggling units. But I mean really help -- roll up their sleeves and run den meeting, it that's what's needed -- not the arms-length advice commissioners are trained to provide now.

Yes. When I became SM we had 12 guys running around with an instructor patch on their sleeve. Unfortunately the troop never used the instructors for anything. It was purely a position in name only. Occasionally we had a guys who would claim Instructor to meet a requirement. One of the first things I did as SM was to eliminate the position all together. The one or two guys who showed a true interest in working with younger guys were made Troop Guides and assigned to the new Scout patrol. That's worked well for us. Currently I have an ASM with a Wood Badge ticket item to restart the Instructor Corps. We've laid out a series of requirements and job descriptions for the postion to ensure any new Instructors are qualified and perform in the position. I think your PL issue is a separate one. If you are trying to get the older guys to step up and take more substantial positions, I'm not sure that's the direction I would go. I think the better approach would be to talk with the guys in question and lay out your expectations for them. We've had times when the older guys (and I'm talking 14 and 15, not 17) would stick the younger guys with PL. Clearly, they know how much work it is and prefer to let someone else haul the freight. The flip side of that is that the younger guys are usually pumped up and want the status of being PL whether they're ready for the job or not. At one point I pulled them all together and pointed out that they are now the older guys in the troop and I needed them to step up and lead. They did, for one term, which worked out very well for the troop.(This message has been edited by Twocubdad)

Yeah, it's not like you're going to get dinged on your quarterly advancement audit. Just be consistent.

There's nothing wrong with that. The instruction portion on our troop meets frequently come from merit badge topics. In fact, the PLC, during the troop planning conference uses the list of merit badges to come up with monthly program ideas. The bugaboo is what happens next. If everyone who sat through the meeting is handed a blue card on the way out, you have a problem. What should happen is for the Scouts to take what they learned from the troop instruction, contact a counselor and find out what he has to do to complete the merit badge. When we have programs like this we typically have very low completion rates for the MB, which is just fine. All we are tring to do is whet the Scouts interest in the topic. Follow-through is part of the learning process.

I had a Scout tell me his life's ambition was to become Chief Scout Executive so he could fire the idiots who keep coming up with these ticky-tack requirements. No, he didn't actually put that in the essay, but in sharing it with the district BOR rep, he said he wouldn't have a problem with it. It is, afterall, the Scout's amibition, so who is he to argue? My advice for stuff like this comes from my eighth grade English teacher -- essays should be like mini skirts: long enough to cover the subject, short enough to be interesting.

From the camp standards: If the camp has a tot lot, adult supervision and guidance are provided, and minimum state requirements are met. Two-deep leadership is provided by a tot lot supervisor at least 21 years of age and an assistant tot lot supervisor at least 18 years of age. Both are qualified to oversee dependent youth, and both have taken Youth Protection training (Camp Leadership: Youth Protection Begins With You, No. 34227); Seasonal Camp Staff Youth Protection and Personal Safety Training, No. 20-138 (available online at http://info.netbsa.org, under Council Solutions Group, Boy Scout, Training); and the National Camping School Camp Security and Stress Management sessions, which may be conducted locally. Provisions are made for preschool-age children of adult leaders to be covered by sickness/accident insurance. One thing you need to watch is that you don't violate state law regulating day care centers. In my state we avoid that by requiring all the tots to have a parent in camp -- that is, only children of camp staffers may stay in the tot lot program. Once we had a dad volunteer to help in camp on Monday with his little one in the tot lot. Tuesday, he dropped off his Cub Scout AND the little brother at camp and he went to work. I thought my co-CD would stroke out. No, we're not a day care center. We require that tots be out of diapers, but beyond that no other requirements. The time or two we've had a special circumstance with the tots, we just assign the tot's parent to the tot lot and let them supervise their own child. Keep in mind your mission is to run a Cub Scout camp, not a tot lot. Once we had a mom show up with one Cub Scout and four siblings for the tot lot! We thanked her for offering to help, but it was a better use of our resources for her to stay home with the little ones. Program stuff is wide open. Much depends on numbers and the ages of your tots. I would encourage you to appoint one of your best volunteers to run the tot lot program and let them have at it. I was always very fortunate to have a great tot lot director. We have a big day camp and consequently a big tot lot program (on year I think we had around 80 tots). The tots are generally grouped by age in various "dens" with their own den leaders and programs adapted to their age. There are lots of crafts, playground time, Disney videos and naps. The older kids (those pushing Cub Scout age) get to take part in selected parts of the main camp program, crafts and games, for example. The tot lot director works with the program area directors to work the tots into the schedule. The little kids, of course, don't do things like shooting sports or aquatics. Instead they may toss water balloons or splash in wading pools. The older "tots" end up being Cub Scout-age girls. If there are sufficient numbers, we form them into a den and put them into the regular rotation. In the past we've had moms on camp staff who were also GSUSA leader and ran Girl Scout programs for the girls. The oldest girls can help look after the little ones. Our tots have their own security/ID system, including a special color t-shirt. We do charge $20 per week for the tots, but we give parents a $20 discount on their Cub's registration. The $20 covers the t-shirt, snacks and program supplies.(This message has been edited by Twocubdad)

Thanks, NJ. The last time I got "it depends" from a lawyer it cost me five grand. Who knows what may have been written into a lease in 1920, but wouldn't there typically be some sort of liquidated damages? I mean, if we signed such a lease, you built a $10 million building and I immediately gave notice of termination, you may be a little upset with me.

Maybe one of you real lawyers can 'splain this to me: Forget all the BSA membership stuff for the moment. Assume two parties sign a lease on a piece of property. One party invests a substantial sum in real improvements to the property based on return over the term of the lease. For some reason, the lease is voided early (although I imagine the reason makes a big difference). Isn't the leasee due some compensation? Does the leasor take over the improvement although they didn't perform the full terms of the lease? Is there statute or precedence which governs or does is go back to the lease?

We have no female ASMs in the troop and no moms who ever camp with us. I would have no problem welcoming them if a mom wished to participate on that level. I imagine if we wanted to encourage the ladies to camp and serve as ASMs there are things we could do better to encourage them along, but that's not really our mission. My bigger problem is too many adults of either gender on campouts. For whatever reason the tradition here of Scouting as a "dad thing" seems to begins in the Cub Scout pack. Lord knows in Cub Scouts we try to recruit any capable leader. But in 15 years I can remember only two female den leaders. It begs the point why we do Lad/Dad cakebake -- we probably should do a Mom & Me campout. Day camp is another story. By far the majority of leaders are female. Interesting observation: I have four boys in the troop from single-mom homes. At one point or another all four of the mothers have commented to me a big reason their son is in Scouting is because they feel the association with adult males is important. Hmmmmm....

Come up with a boat load of superlatives. Biggest, tallest, most patriotic, most disgusting (the boys love that), yummiest, best use of the colors blue and gold, best Cub Scout theme, on and on and on. One year for prizes a dad came back from some corporate shindig with a case of paper chef's hats the caterer had thrown out. We decorated the chef hat for trophies. That was pretty cool. Decide what you are going to do with the cakes in advance. The first year we ran this everyone drew numbers to see which cake you took home. We spent $30 on baking stuff and came home with a cake that wasn't fit to eat. After that, the pack decided that everyone got their own cake back. I know some packs had auctions. If Billy really wants his own cake back, dad needs to step up with the bidding. That was suggested here, but our pack sold a ton of popcorn so we didn't need the money. The committee decided we didn't need to fleece the flock again. Figure out how much you want to push the "Lad/Dad" angle. Be considerate of Scouts who may not live with their dad. Our pack called our event the "Fellers' Bake-off." Any feller would do -- grandfather, uncle, neighbor, mom's new squeeze, whoever. And if it were a problem we put it out there that mom or grandma was okay too. There was a recent thread here about that side of things, if you want to search it.

The infraction was a mid-range safety issue. If I were to make a recommendation it would probably be a rather-involved make-good project and probation. Hopefully that gives you an idea of the scope without going into all the gory details. But what I'm really looking for are procedural recommendations for how to implement this with the PLC.

Until now our PLC has not handled behavioral issues. It's been a couple years since we've had a problem (knock on wood) and the last time around the PLC just didn't have the ability to handle it. We've got an issue from the last campout and I'd like the PLC to handle. For anyone who has their PLC deal with behavioral problems, how do you handle it? What procedures do you use? How do you present the "case" to the PLC? Does someone serve as the prosecutor? What is the role of the adults? Does the troop committee sign off on the PLC's decision? Is there an appeal? What do you do if the PLC goes off reservation? I don't particularly relish the idea of getting into a hokey mock trial thing, but there needs to be some organization. I also think it important that the PLC have some background as to how the troop has handled similar situations in the past, just from a consistency standpoint.(This message has been edited by Twocubdad)

I've never been to a Scout camp that didn't have at least one camp dog hanging around. Usually some mutt that wandered up and lives on dropped Cheetos and burned bacon. They can't leave because they're too fat for the hike out. I think if you asked most kids nowadays, they would tell you a mascot is a six-foot foam rubber cartoon character a la the San Diego Chicken.

Stosh wrote: "In our troop we make it clear that the PL's are the highest ranking officer in the troop...." I'm not sure what that means. Do patrol leaders appoint the Scoutmaster? Can they remove him if they don't like the job he's doing? Must the SM consult the PLs before appointing ASMs? What if, Stosh, instead of wanting to go to the high adventure camp, your older patrol wants to go to a video gaming camp for a week? What if the camp is coed or open to adults or sells alcohol in the camp lounge? Or what if you are a LDS troop and your CO requires the troop to be back in the ward for Sunday services. But your patrol really wants to go to an event which extends over a Sunday morning. Does your PL's authority supercede the policy of the CO? Everyone operates within both the responsibilities and authority that comes with their position. As Scoutmaster, I have certain responsibilities and authority which is granted as part of the BSA program. I have the responsibility to ensure policies outlined in the Guide to Safe Scouting are met. I have the authority to decide who in the troop may sign-off on advancement. I do not have the authority to add or delete requirements. Patrol leaders operate within a similar environment. A patrol leader may have the authority to sign-off on basic requirements, however he is not authorized to sign advancement reports or Eagle applications. A patrol may be authorized to camp on their own, but the troop leadership may impose restrictions, such as requiring they camp as a BSA facility. While you write of your PLs having both responsibility and authority, there is a third element -- accountability. Daddy always told me "everybody works for somebody. Even the President is answerable to the voters." You can draw your organization chart however you want, but like it or not, ultimate authority flows from both BSA and your chartered organization through the adult leadership. The adults are charged with the ultimate responsibility to see that the program and policy are followed consistent with the BSA and our COs. Youth leadership is part of the game of scouting. While we may allow our patrols to play the game very broadly or more narrowly, there are limits to the game. Occasionally we have to call "out of bounds." That said, it's a pretty sorry Scoutmaster who can't figure out how to keep the game going. A PL announces that his patrol has voted to spend a week this summer in Taihiti. "Great." says the Scoutmaster, "bring your travel plans to the PLC. Don't forget to include how your going to pay for it all." A quick look at airfares on the Internet nips that in the bud. If a group of my Scouts want to go to another summer camp, I tell them to go for it. Come back with a plan. But there are real-world constraints including a couple levels of adult sign-offs on the plan. Logistics, cost, schedule, adequate adult leadership, safety.... Just because you label your Patrol Leaders the highest ranking officers in the troop doesn't mean they aren't accountable.

We've kicked around the idea of printing adult t-shirts with "Ask Your Patrol Leader" on them just to save time.

"I wish you the best in finding a troop that operates that way." And yes, I have used that line a number of times. Two weeks ago we had our Webelos campout. In the afternoon, when all the boys are on a hike around camp, we do an orientation session with the Webelos parents. In introducing the topic of advancement, I ask the parents to close their eyes and envision the morning before their son receives his Eagle award. Their son is heading to the ceremony early and as he leaves they give him a big hug, tell him how proud they are of him, suggest that he really needs to do a better job shaving and that he needs to put gas in the car. Of course the point is they need to be envisioning their son receiving his Eagle somewhere along about his junior or senior year of high school.

Very, very well said, Beav. I would add that as Scouters we have the obligation to advocate for both the Scout and the Scouts. The two aren't necessarily the same. I'm dealing with a situation now with a Scout who served his six months in the POR but did a very substandard job of it. Removing him from the position prior to the six months would have created a strong legal position for the troop, but would have cost the boy a chance at Eagle (he's close to 18). He was, however, counseled through the term that his performance was substandard and given advice for how to improve. Now it's time to fish or cut bait and either approve his Eagle app or not. What precedence are we setting? Do we really want our boys working the "quantity not quality" approach to PORs or the "registered=active" view of participation? Our Scouts know the quality of work this Scout has done. Two SPL would not have appointed him to a POR without my insistance and, again, costing the boy Eagle. (Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.) One of my concerns is the message this sends to the rest of the troop. Who is to advocate for them?(This message has been edited by Twocubdad)

Our troop still has a sleeve of about 75 red-and-white custom two-digit numerals with an integral service bar. The troop will stick with the red-and-whites until we run out. A Scout is Thrifty

Here's a thought: if the only reason a bunch of 15-year-old Boy Scouts can't take over your job is because of union work rules, maybe it's time to consider a career change. Thought #2: it's probably a good thing to judge an Eagle project based on the project proposal not a newspaper article, written by a reporter who probably knows nothing about Eagle project, when the article isn't really about Eagle projects in the first place. And a question: where did we get the idea that the ban on "routine service" means an Eagle project must be unique and original. Gee, that kind of limits projects to brain transplants and constructing cold fusion reactors. I've never seen a Eagle project that isn't a job or service normally rendered by SOMEONE. The intent of that clause is clearly that project needs to meet some need which is not currently being met. Yard work is probably the best example of a routine labor. Painting may or may not be routine labor. If you're merely touching up around a skating rink, no; but locally I've seen a very good Eagle project of repainting a battered womens' shelter. The standard is whether or not a Scout can demonstrate leadership in the course of the work. Even if the underlying work is fairly routine labor, if the scope of the work adds the necessary planning, recruitment, organization, funding, motivation and managment skills for the Scout to demonstrate his leadership, it should be acceptable.

Some councils just shouldn't be in the business of running a camp. Sounds like yours may be one of them. Depending on facilities, resources, staff, volunteers and competition, some camps aren't going to survive. There is a school of thought that some of these camps should be allowed to go away. The one route you may try is contacting your regional office and finding out who the Area Camping Chairman is. His/her committee is responsible for conducting the resident camp accreditation visitation (that's PC-speak for camp inspection). Several of those issues will be reflected in the national resident camp standards. On the other hand, after 10 years of butting your head against that wall, maybe it's time to move on?

There's a fine line between boy led and boy led off into a ditch. I won't say what you did was inappropriate. With the other guys off running ferral, you could have taken the alone time to coach the PL on some techniques for keeping control of the group. We teach our guys that if they're having trouble keeping discipline to bump it up the chain of command. With no SPL, the PL going to an adult is appropriate. We have one patrol with a fairly young PL and several older patrol members. A couple weeks ago the PL was taking a lot of flack from the patrol members as he tried to plan a campout. Much of the flack was coming from a couple guys who weren't attending the campout. I invited the offending older guys outside for a "you elected him, you follow him" reminder. Adults have a role in the program other than turning out the lights at the end of the meeting. Stepping in a coaching the boys is absolutely what we're there for. One-on-one is best, off-line is best. And if the Scouts are engaged and working at it, let it run. But in the situation you described, no learning was occuring. The patrol was off running wild and the PL was sitting alone. Resetting the game, setting them up and sending them off again is a good thing. Sounds like you have a fairly young troop. Was the SPL absent do are you just not big enough for one? If you have a large troop and a corps of older Scouts leaders, my reply would change.

If my district advancement chair and unit commissioner are giving me grief because I very correctly refuse to approve an advancement significantly short of the require time, they wouldn't have the opportunity to storm out of the meeting. They would be thrown out long before. Why are the DAC and UC even involved at this point? And why in the world are they giving you such wrong information? There's got to be more to this.....