karunamom3

My son is taking a virtual photography MB. They need to upload their worksheet and images into folders in a Google classroom. He looked at the folders of 2 other scouts in his troop to see their pictures. The counselor has shown other scouts work in their online meetings so my son felt confident that it was ok to look at other scouts pics. The 2 scouts in his troop are brothers. It was obvious to my son immediately that his troop mates did not take the pics in their folders. Most of the pics are of themselves! They are pics their mom took for the most part. My son was not happy because he put a lot of work into it. He noted that the MB counselor will not know that the pics in scout A's folder are pics of him so obviously not taken by him. If this was an in person class this would not be an issue. My son wants to contact the MB counselor to let him know. I am on the fence myself because their mom is always looking for the short cut and trying to get things done the easy way. I talked to my son about the fact that the others are really not learning what they should be and they will have to live with that. He needs to consider his options. Maybe even talk with the scouts directly. He knows the mom pulls the strings though and a talk with them won't help much. How should I direct him? Any advice? Edited to add that I am the advancement coordinator and the CC of the troop. It will be tough for me to enter those MB's into Scoutbook knowing they really weren't earned.😔

Yes. I believe the servers are still there. So the Chinese Gov't can seize the servers if they wish. Although I imagine other platforms use foreign countries too. Apparently NY State Attorney Genera,l Letitia James, started an inquiry. Now Zoom has been banned from NYC schools by the NYC Dept of Ed, which is who our committee member works for. From the image above the only 2 things I dont do are create a waiting room and lock the meeting. I didnt know you could lock it. I will look into it. I am honestly on no rush to make changes. It took me weeks to figure Zoom out and become comfortable with it.

The title says it all. Which one do you use for virtual pack/troop meetings? It seems almost all of the scout resources we have been using are on Zoom (merit badges, virtual campfires, roundtables, etc). And this is with councils all over the country. I think we have one class with Ring Meetings. Our schools are also using Zoom. We just held our first pack meeting on Zoom and a committee member brought up the safety concerns with Zoom about 30 min before go on a forum with all of the parents. Frustrating. Is anyone moving away from Zoom?

I will send my son to another state provo if its within 6 hours of NJ. He will also be devastated if he cant go this year.

We are a new unit with little money in a not wealthy area. We had hoped the scouts could raise most of the money needed for summer camp through fundraising. Well due to quarantine we have lost our 3 big fundraising opportunities (event concession stand, candy sale, car wash). Our council still plans on opening camp in July if allowed to by the state. How can we help these scouts get funding? I know we are not supposed to solicit funds. Can we do something like hold a virtual car wash where we pre-sell car wash vouchers? We are at a loss really. Our kids want to go, but some just can't afford it. And we don't want to seem crass by trying to fundraise during tough times either. Keep it within our CO? Appeal to the mayor for money? Thanks for your insight.

We are a brand new troop this year and decided to go to winnebago so we could possibly get camperships and its within 1 hr from us. (Last year was a different troop at jersey shore council camp). And 2 of our boys love Winnebago. They had really great Webelos resident camp experiences there. But, I hear great things about SOME of the PA camps. Would love to know which ones you recommend.

I agree. We are scheduled to go to Winnebago July 12th. Who knows how things will be then. We are struggling with approaching our families about camp & applying for camperships when we have families losing income and loved ones. Now we are considering moving our week to later or cancelling and going to the MB week in August. 😥

The early bird deadline is now May 1 for PPC. It will be really tough for us to get our scouts to go I fear. It is the last thing on many people's minds.

Wow. That's a month away. I'm surprised they may keep them open that long. Here in NJ it feels more imminent.

Thanks. I couldn't figure out how to do it.

I agree to follow the schools lead but we will also look to the parents and see how they want to proceed as well. I did see a list on NJ.com of all the schools closed for a "planning" day. Some are closed on Monday as well. On a female BSA FB group I am in, there is a lot of discussion about virtual meetings. Both Zoom and Google Hangouts were mentioned.

So we ended up canceling the trip mentioned in the original post. We put it to a parental vote and it was an overwhelming cancel response. Now we need do decide on our district PWD which we are hosting on 3/21 and expect 150-200 people to attend based on last years numbers. Ugh. I think I need to visit our towns health dept and check in since we have rented their space. For our meetings, both pack and troop, we are going to decide weekly if we will meet. We just had the first cases reported in our county yesterday.

Here is fine. I will see if I can update the title.

Good ideas. Now that it stays lighter later outside may be an option. At least for our cubs.

That's a great idea. Thanks

Due to coronavirus, has anyone cancelled or not booked a planned event? Has your council or district done so? We have a big camp-in scheduled but are now on the fence about going. We need to book & pay this week. For reference we are in NJ sandwiched by 5 cases above us and 1 case below us. I think the majority of scouters are not worried about the virus, but more about quarantines since NJ has a few hundred folks in self quarantine already and it has just begun here.

I stumbled across this 'no sell' fundraiser. I didnt delve to deep into it. Looks interesting, but scouts provide community service just to be good scouts. Any thoughts on it https://kindness.raisecraze.com/no-selling-gen/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign_C-1819SCHL&utm_content=ADSG-64BYSTFR--AD-8RSA----receTI2O0dY1YY91K&utm_term=%2Bboy %2Bscout %2Bfundraiser&gclid=Cj0KCQiAk7TuBRDQARIsAMRrfUbWELgJoYxAksANe3ZcymIcYPndLZwwNHszsID9riBi1_GNg42uQxwaAnSNEALw_wcB

And for us, a brand new troop & pack, this could really hurt. We don't have a lot of money to begin with. I keep thinking it will be alright and everything will work out in the end. Maybe that is naive, I don't know. I love scouting. My youngest is only a Tiger and already plans to get her Eagle so I have a long way to go with the BSA and don't plan on leaving. I was quite surprised the other day when a Scouts BSA scout said to me that it really doesn't matter what rank he is because BSA is closing soon anyway. I was shocked. His dad is his SM. I wonder what conversations they have had, if any.

Yes! Our district made it a weekend camping program. We had 6 scouts complete the radio merit badge and 4 begin pioneering. We are in NJ and we connected to folks, some scouts, in Maine, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Canada and Germany. It was open to cubs, scouts and venturers. It was cold, but lots of fun!

Yes! We love the WSJ neckers we bought. Nice hefty size. Wish they didn't sell out so darn quickly!

Welcome to the forums! 😃

We put neckercheifs on hold because we had issues opening a bank account. But, our lodge is all for it. They even want us to create a second design to put on a special necker for the lodges 100yr anniversary next fall. In addition, we found out that the Grand Lodge of NJ has a scout necker design on file that has been used in the past. We are waiting for our contact to show us that.

Barry, good point. I guess I am asking if anyone else got feedback like this from their councils. It was basically like as long as it is entered into scoutbook, blue cards dont matter and not needed. We were shocked honestly

Good to know that other summer camps are not giving cards. Thanks. I do know about the partials. So 2 of our boys missed one requirement for Astronomy. Before leaving camp they spoke with the counselor about it. When they learned a leader was going back they got it done and brought the blue cards back. The counselor marked the number as complete but didn't sign. I'm sure it was because he never does. It's all printed on the computer by the office staff.

We had such a hard time with blue cards and summer camp. Most were missing, wrong, not signed (even though all requirements were marked completed), signed digitally, not blue, etc. Even after a leader spent 3 hours at camp a week later to try and straighten it all out there are still issues. After discussing with council they are not concerned. They do not like the blue cards and believe scouting is moving away from them. They feel the cards are more trouble than anything. (Not being received, digital signatures, lost, etc) They told us that if everything is recorded properly in Scoutbook then the blue cards are really not needed unless we, our unit, needs them. I was quite surprised at this because I have been told from day 1 to save every blue card for Eagle BOR. Any thoughts on this?