HashTagScouts

Well, you have to make larger donation, but yes, the OA does have knots too

If they only want you to wear it to official OA functions where only Arrowmen would be present, it doesn't seem to really help advertise to increase participation. They could have just gone with a "years of service" type pin to attach to a sash IMO, rather than whole new sash. That would be far more subtle than this.

This is so weird to me- you can drive out, but not in. If their real intent is not just have folks driving o'er hill and dale and trampling everything on the way, it would seem that the Camp staff could serve a purpose on saying "you will be accompanied by Camp Staff to drop trailers at the appropriate troop campsite". Our camp has a designated hour, before campers are to arrive, for units that wish to have a trailer at their campsite. Staff don't physically ride along with them (as they are typically the youth staff), but they will meet them at the campsite if the unit is not familiar with where to appropriately place trailers (Ranger allows in site entryway, but not within the campsite proper).

If the parent is adamant that the Scout isn't being held back on purpose, and there is nothing wrong with how the troop is operating, the only plausible scenario to me is the Scout is just not pursuing to get signed off on requirements or request a SM conference. If the Scout was doing those things, then based on what you have written, it would seem that the troop is holding them back and the parent isn't being honest to themself.

I'd encourage your son to send an email tonight to the SM asking if he could take a few minutes of the his time to have the SMC tonight, and even an offer to meet prior to the meeting if the SM is available. Might get him farther with the SM, and removes the opportunity for the SM to use an excuse of he is feeling cornered that it is "last minute" (in his mind).

Chartering Agreements to this point have had a responsibility listed for the CO to "Select a Charter Organization Representative (COR) to serve as a voting member of the council". I would presume that this change being highlighted is going to impact the 2026 chartering agreement, to remove that. Ultimately, it was a bylaw/rule/regulation of the National Organization, so only the National Board needs to vote to amend the bylaw/rules/regulations.

In my neck of the woods, we've been doing this since I was a youth. General rule is if school is closed, we do not meet (which includes days the schools close because of snow). Over the summer we meet once for summer camp prep, then summer camp, then the rest of the summer is PLC planning meeting, and a few day events (fishing derby, troop outing to an amusement park, swim night at one of our family's house or at the YMCA, movie night, a day hike, etc. - whatever the PLC agrees on, more social gathering/engagement than skill/advancement focused. Still had the PLC/Senior Scouts in charge of planning details and lead supervision at these events. While I could understand momentum loss could result, it has always been for us more of a short time of fun getting ready for the work to return for another year= understood that way by both youth and adults. Additionally, when your own kid(s) hit the age that they are working at camp all summer, and OA starts up before school does, there's enough Scouting to never really have so much of the break that others were having.

I won't respond to surveys that won't share the summary of responses with participants. Drives my employer nuts I won't respond to semi-annual employee surveys, but such is a qualifier for my participation

This is coming after they are putting a ton of work into Camp Pupukea on Oahu. New Cabin Designs Unveiled for Camp Pupukea - Hawaii Parent

Based on your previous posts, you've got ground work to go, as though you are building a brand new troop. Understandable you aren't at the ideal operations yet. Hopefully, the SM is at least using the SM conferences to instill some expectations for these youth as they move towards their next rank. Based on the one experience you've described, probably not what is going on, and that presents challenges of a whole different nature.

When programming is working as it should, this is one element that is correct to evaluate the health of the unit and make SM aware of blind spots. If younger youth are getting pencil-whipped through requirements. and older youth who should be teaching are not, the unit is not healthy.

Especially for Scouts on the younger end, you don't want a BOR to crush their spirit, so making the knots a game just makes it light-hearted. Just encourage them to keep trying later on- "that's OK [Sam], I get my fingers twisted sometimes too. But I'll do this every know and then to challenge myself". Again, the intent of BOR is not re-test and search for reason to not pass them- every BOR I saw as means to evaluate how we were doing as a program for discussion to the SM. Hopefully the SM can work that feedback into discussion with the SPL and PLC- "I think it would be good if next month we find an activity to include in a troop meeting to practice knots".

This is true- however, at least one adult sitting on the BOR should understand the program enough to be able to ask questions constructively to assess the Scout and competency on the requirements. That isn't to penalize that Scout, but is helpful to give constructive feedback to the SM if the Scout was lacking, so that hopefully there can be a course correction before the next rank. For example, Tenderfoot knot requirements: Demonstrate a practical use of the square knot. Demonstrate a practical use of two half-hitches. Demonstrate a practical use of the taut line hitch. I'd have a small rope with me, and ask the Scout if they ever timed themselves to see how fast they could do all of them, one after the other- and then proceed to do it myself with them timing me. "OK, I felt that was not my best- how about you give it a try and see how fast you can do it?" It's pretty clear pretty quick if the kid can't even get through a square knot in less than a minute he hasn't truly gained "mastery".

Hype him up that there are some cool options for patrol patches with that name!

What NY councils are you tracking? Last I heard, Suffolk County Council voted against merger with Theodore Roosevelt Council.

That they would be independent thinkers and learners is hardly socialism or communism.

I'd start by referring her to read the rank requirements, pointing out: 30 days (minimum) required to earn Tenderfoot due to the fitness requirement, 4 weeks (minimum) after earning Tenderfoot to earn Second Class (fitness requirement), 4 weeks (minimum) after earning Second Class to earn First Class (fitness requirement). I appreciate the kids enthusiasm, but it is a marathon and not a sprint. To each unit their own, but I wouldn't accept the youth doing videos for rank requirements. If the youth wanted to come to a troop meeting and ask the SPL if there is time for someone to test him on requirement X if time allows, that is at the SPL discretion.

The last unit I was with had purchased new tents the year before that YP change, and they were intended to be used for three youth - bad choice IMO (3 per tent?), I came in at the tail end of that decision and couldn't understand that logic- also thought they went with too high-brow of a tent model, and within a year two of them were missing poles/had broken poles/had tears in the rain fly. Prior unit did individual, Scout (parent) purchased, tenting and that worked out well. Troop had a few troop owned tents that mainly were used for the first campouts after crossover so the youth transitioning in had a little time to learn the ropes. For the kids who preferred hammocks, they used hammocks. Their tent, they were in charge of bringing it home, airing it out, and keeping it in good repair. Some kids would bring their family 6 man tent to a campout, but the other Scouts would make it known that this was not up to expectation pretty quickly (usually by making that Scout wait it out before helping them to set it up- watching an 11 year old try to set up a 6 man tent by themselves is a sight to behold). Some Scouts would start off with a $30 Walmart one-man tent, some went right for the REI models. My son had a Walmart one, but he saw me taking care of my tent, so with him hitting it with waterproof spray at the start of each year and checking seams that tent held up well for him over the years. That tent only weighed a little over 4 pounds, so wasn't bad for backpacking or regular weekend outings.

Also are not supposed to be tenting youth together that are more than two years apart in age. For mixed age patrols, that just requires a little extra vigilance on how the patrol decides on tentmates, which then means adults having to be hovering over their shoulders for something that years ago we just left them to it.

We had started off with intent to keep units separate, then when numbers fell and recruitment just wasn't bringing in new girls, for practical purposes we had to do everything jointly. The pilot just made sense- especially as we were told from our Field Service Director that National did not want councils to keep letting units re-charter with 3-4 youth year-over-year anymore- that it was survival for us. Too many girls in our pack have brothers, and to lose pairings each year would kill us, and eventually begin to make parents question why they are even registering their kids in our pack when they'll have to move to the town over in 3 years like their BFF's kids had to do.

The "Make Our Program Highly Relevant" presentation was the relevant one to watch (https://nam.scouting.org/presentations/). Angelique spoke in that video on the pilot and what they are reviewing and timing as "fall". The "Opening General Session" Roger Krone" mentioned October on decision specific to this pilot. Not sure where the December was coming from, but the February that Angelique mentions in the FB post is - to me anyway - odd If the pilot is killed for existing units (for forming new units, that would correlate to AoL crossover, which makes sense if continuing the pilot). I still say that with the 174 units that are in pilot, Scouting America is highly unlikely to do away with this option.

General discussion at National Annual Meeting on it. Videos of presentations found here: https://nam.scouting.org/presentations/ No decision on continuing the pilot will be announced until October.

Why? If your Council is anything like mine, these Council weekend camporees and events are adult planned and adult lead, not Scout planned or Scout lead. Taking a smaller, younger unit to one a year to spark them to suck up some knowledge might be good, but otherwise, I'd rather have them off learning by doing. Making mistakes is a part of learning in my book. It is long and complicated history to get all into Scout camps and long-term resident camp structures, but for me one has to first look at the program itself and how it morphed over time. The earliest days of Scouting were small and fairly widely distributed on units that were formed prior to 1910 and in that first decade 1910-1919. Mostly rural, and camping meant hiking across town to a patch of woods rather than trekking off to some 500 acre camp. BSA growth from 1920 to post-WWII was predominantly in urban areas, and that began the rush for councils to acquire property for these units to have spaces of their own to build out and structure for solely Scouting purposes. Not all of these properties were huge tracts, some were just several acres. Residence camp ("summer camp") for many was multiple weeks, and didn't involve brining in adults to lead- the Scouts/units themselves generally lead the program. Our legacy council was split to three districts, and camp, up until the early 50's, was two weeks per district. The SE was the camp director and in charge of logistics (how to get Scouts and food to camp), and there was one other adult that was "staff"- that was the program director and worked with the with units to carry out their planning of daily activities. The camp property the council had in those years had no dining hall, no showerhouse, etc. There were only three structures on the property when it was sold in the early 1950s and they acquired a new, larger property. Beginning in the 1970s, as membership had peaked and began to drop in many areas, "excess" properties began to be sold off or sometimes transferred to state/municipal entities. For New England as a whole, from about the mid 1990s to present, about two dozen properties have been sold or transferred (many in the later category will still allow some limited weekend usage by Scouting units). Some of those were several-hundred acre type properties, some were hold-over small properties (often with little to no developed structures or water/electricity supply) from decades past. From the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s, several dozen properties were dispatched, often as part of paying down debts to stave off inevitable council mergers. Our youth several years ago tried to get SPLs from other district units together to plan a fall camporee, as our troop stopped going for a few years because it was all adult lead. The District Chair and the District Activities Coordinator were all onboard, until suddenly after a few meetings they weren't. The weekend went off fully adult planned and lead. When we inquired why this had changed, the response was that the "at large" District members (these are adults that are not registered to units, and not in a District Key 3 position, but are still registered to BSA) felt that they were being "left with nothing to do". Our unit had nothing to do with Council/District, aside from Eagle Boards, for the next four years. We couldn't understand how adults that were supposedly sticking around in a front of "supporting Scouting" took over youth running an event, and that seemed appropriate to everyone in a position of authority. I certainly don't have all the answers, and I may be completely wrong on this (even just for simple basic "health and safety" concerns we have to face today), but I am fine with the organization being at the size of youth membership that it is today, if only we could go back to that simpler time when a Council was only a small cluster of towns and had one employee, and camping and program in general wasn't big production. If we could process paperwork with nothing more than typewriters and the USPS back then, technology today should certainly make it feasible to scale appropriately without over-the-top bloat.

I have never asked anyone from that Council, but I did talk with an old timer from NY several years ago and they came up in conversation. The longstanding rumor is that they told National many years ago- like, when they were still headquartered in NYC- that they would never agree to change any of the charter agreement language, so that what you stated would remain the case as it had been going back to 1912, that Council was in charge of hiring their own staff. Camp Seton is also believed to be legally owned by the Greenwich Council corporate entity, and Greenwich Council "threatens" National that they will never agree to transfer ownership of it if National tried to take away their charter. 250 acres in Greenwich CT is worth a pretty penny in todays real estate market I'm sure. This all as I say rumor, would be interested if it is accurate.