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Cleveland Rocks

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Everything posted by Cleveland Rocks

  1. No patrol competitions in Scoutcraft. No Scoutcraft area either. This isn't Summer Camp. With the exception of four defined programs that units will be attending together at pre-set dates/times, the entire program is up to the Scout. They have the total freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Program areas are open each day from 9:00 - 5:00.
  2. Emailed out last night from our neighboring council, from the NAM: Dear Scouting family, Moments ago we received the following very important message from our national council and wanted to share it with you in its entirety. BSA’s emergence from bankruptcy represents a pivotal milestone in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA)’s financial restructuring case and solidifies a path forward for survivors and the Scouting movement. To preserve its mission, the BSA has had to take some extraordinary steps over the past three years to reposition the organization
  3. Looks like SOAR is not dead. They just sent everyone an email earlier today saying that the number of customers saying that they didn't want it to go away was overwhelming. They loved the simplicity that SOAR offered as well as all the other features that the other options didn't fully offer, particularly for us vanity domain support and email groups tied to that domain. The owner of SOAR is transferring ownership to a company called Meridian Computing that looks to have the tenure and bandwidth to serve us going forward. The owner will stay on as a consultant. It also helps that the
  4. Maybe not . . . if you go to the FAQ that they created, there's this little tidbit posted to it Monday night: Is SOAR out of business? That will be determined later this week. Some individuals have reached out that may be a path for SOAR to continue. If that's really true, we might be willing to wait it out, depending on how long it might take to get something back up and running. For us, neither Troopmaster or TroopWebHost really provides us what we had with SOAR, and it'll cost us more money to get back to where we were before. Remember, TroopWebHost is saying it wil
  5. The decision for us is that with SOAR, it wasn't just a calendar (we had subscribed to the SOAR calendar through Google Calendar, so people could see the events on their mobile devices, etc.), it's that with SOAR, the calendar was also for sign-ups, and you could track who was signed up, and whether they had paid, and if they were bringing guests, how many guests were they bringing, etc. The SOAR calendar also allowed us to allow others to sign-up for events, something Scoutbook doesn't allow for on their calendars. And, it was all easy-peasy to use. Like someone else said, you didn'
  6. Yes, we registered the domain name troopX.org over a decade ago, pre-dating my time in the troop. We then use that domain name to have our SOAR website be www.troopX.org instead of www.yourtroop.mytroop.us. SOAR also handled the email addresses using that domain, so we had info@troopX.org for inquiries to our troop, cmty@troopX.org for emails to our Troop Committee, summercamp@troopX.org for all communication with appropriate leaders regarding summer camp, treasurer@troopX.org for all emails to our troop treasurer, etc. And sending to those groups was very easy--if you wanted to send an emai
  7. One of the things we really liked about SOAR was that it allowed us to have our website with our own URL, and we could have any number of emails tied to that domain name. We also like the ability to keep lists of our alumni and families, as we regularly communicate with them, something Scoutbook does not allow. Does anyone know if TroopWebHost or Troopmaster allows either of those things? I've reached out to them both, but with it being the weekend when all this transpired, obviously no one is going to answer until Monday at the earliest.
  8. This has been in the works for many months. The realignment takes place January 1, and all the names are all selected (although I only know the name of our new district, not the others). Our council is going from 8 districts to 5. Three of the 8 districts have Native American names (one is actually not a real name, but a combination of the first letters of 9 NA tribes that used to live in the area). A fourth is/was named Arrowhead, and while that's not an NA name per se, it has obvious NA references. A fifth is/was named (just recently in 2018!) after a local landmark that was used by NA
  9. Our OA lodge just voted last weekend to change the totem used on our lodge flaps and other media from a side-profile Native American in full headdress to a black squirrel. Our district (which had a Native American name) just merged with another and the contest conducted to come up with a new name had explicit instructions that Native American names or references could not be used in the new name.
  10. I will second the comment on hot and humid days. I have one and it is not a good hat to wear in the summer. I switch to a bucket hat in the summer months, something that is cooler and is able to breathe a bit better. But I definitely wear mine in the cooler months.
  11. The BSA says: if all those units were charted to the same CO, then yes, they could do an activity together. But if they are not, the BSA says no. This was the stance prior to the pandemic; it is just being reiterated again. Because you'd be planning an activity for units that your CO does not charter, that would prevent the activity from being permitted. The relevant quote from the BSA's COVID-19 FAQ (emphasis mine): ♦ Q: If my camp is cancelled, can my unit get together with other units and have our own camp? No. Chartering organizations play an important role in the program an
  12. Our council still awards them. We got JTE and 100% Boys' Life ribbons from them this year. Our troop has so many ribbons we have to periodically offload them because there are so many on the flagpole it gets hard to attach new ones at times. We get them at camporees, klondikes, summer camp, FoS, and more. I can't speak for the rest of the country, but our council and districts still use them and units still fly them from their flagpoles.
  13. The BSA's guidance on whether you should or shouldn't store the AHMR electronically (you shouldn't): The forms should be maintained by a designated leader. To assure privacy, the forms should be carefully stored and used only as needed to provide for planning and rendering care. The AHMR should not be scanned, stored, or sent electronically except as specifically directed for a BSA national event such as the national jamboree or NOAC.
  14. The 2021 NSJ has been postponed. https://jamboree.scouting.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/07/NSJ21_Postponement_FAQ_FINAL.pdf
  15. As the training chair for my troop, not only would it not be inappropriate, I do it in my committee meetings all the time when someone's YPT or Hazardous Weather training is about to expire and they have not responded to individual direct messages. My council and district's training people contact me all the time whenever someone's training is about to expire, so I think it's only fair that I pass that information on to the person, and if they don't respond in a timely manner, I will absolutely bring it up at a committee meeting. If the person allows the training to expire, I get a messa
  16. I'm surprised they were allowed to recharter? A valid YPT is required to recharter for all registered members. Our council and district training people begin hounding you 90 days before your YPT is going to expire to make sure you get it renewed. They're quite explicit with us in their reminders--if you allow your YPT to expire in the middle of the year, you are not permitted to participate in Scouting activities until you get it renewed. They also copy the unit's training person as well as the unit Key 3 (although in this case, the CC is one of the Key 3).
  17. Lots of Webelos Scouts earn all 27 Webelos and Arrow of Light adventures. There's even a Webelos Super Achiever award to commemorate it: https://www.scoutshop.org/cub-scout-webelos-super-achiever-emblem-648454.html https://www.scoutshop.org/webelos-super-achiever-wall-certificate-621112.html Let your son's Webelos Den Leader know (when he becomes a Webelos in June) and they can work on helping him and others in the den work towards these adventures.
  18. There is no difference. You register on the national Jamboree site to register your Scout as a participant to the Jamboree. He/she will be part of your council's contingent. There are no "regular registrants" or "lone scouts" participating in the Jamboree; they're all part of a council contingent. The $1,175 cost you see quoted is the national fee to participate in the Jamboree. That's the portion that everyone pays. Unit gear is provided as part of that fee: tents, cots, picnic tables, dining flys, cooking equipment, meals, and paying for the expense of putting on the Jamboree (all the
  19. There used to be a belief--I don't know if it was ever true--that Scoutmasters were automatically Merit Badge Counselors for every merit badge, just by the fact that they're a Scoutmaster. Many long-time Scoutmasters still hold that belief. I have been to events where I have had Scoutmasters proclaim this, only to be told by practically everyone else in the room, "no you aren't!" That may be where that thinking came from. There are many who believe that Scoutmasters (or Assistant Scoutmasters, or Committee Members, etc.) should not counsel their own child on Merit Badges (or sign off
  20. Troop Secretary badge? Do you mean Troop Committee badge? There is no official badge for Troop Secretary.
  21. Our summer camp allows adults to bring bikes to use, provided they wear helmets, and quite a few adults use them. They also allow staff to ride bikes. A neighboring summer camp allows Scouts to bring bikes. I don't know how many take advantage of it, but I believe they allow it due to the distances between program areas, to shorten the travel time between activities.
  22. Merit Badge counselor registrations have always been no charge. There are no fees to pay out of a unit's budget for a Merit Badge Counselor registration, because they are considered district-level positions, not unit-level positions. Merit Badge Counselor (position code 42 on the application), Unit Scouter Reserve (code 91) and College Scouter Reserve (code 92) are all no-fee registrations.
  23. Our Council Scout Executive explained it to us like this at one of our leader breakfasts this past summer at Summer Camp: The national council carries liability insurance for everyone. That's what much of your national fee covers, and that's what most of the fee increase covers. Some councils carry their own liability insurance, that is in addition to the national insurance. Some of those councils that carry their own insurance do not charge their members anything extra for the cost of that additional insurance. They pay for it with things like fundraising and FOS. Other councils charge
  24. It depends on the GSUSA council. Some councils have essentially told their membership to avoid us like the plague, while others don't care. Our troop has done Scouting For Food drives for years on the weekends right after Thanksgiving. Each of the last two years, we've had Girl Scouts join us and haven't had any issues or pushback from the local GSUSA council. We plan on having them join us again this year.
  25. Well, I think there that there's more to it when they talk about "making it hard to go camping". Some leaders just don't want to go camping, period, and it's an easy thing for them to just say, "we don't camp because national makes it too hard for us to camp." I've spoken to many GSUSA troop leaders who do find the rules and regs regarding camping to be onerous, but I don't see them as much different than what we in the BSA have set forth. The minimum number of volunteers rule tends to be a sticky wicket with a lot of troop leaders, and they tell me it's why they keep their troop membersh
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