yknot

Liability issues kind of prevent a scalpel approach. Also, you can have false negative Covid tests but it's rare to get a false positive, so you have to assume there are more than three cases. Additionally, Covid, and especially the newer variants that are vexing everyone, have exponential transmission rates. Three cases today can be 9 or 27 cases tomorrow. And that 0.3% you cite is simply a snapshot in time. Who knows how many campers tested positive once campers went home.

We did requirements together throughout the year as a den and then everyone advanced rank at the blue and gold in February. At that point, AOLs would transition over to troops. Parents/scouts would work on requirements they missed on their own whenever they needed to so it wasn't an issue if they had to miss a meeting. We felt it was more fun to do things together. Don't get hung up on who does what, do what works for your den and unit There is no right way to do it Just make sure it's fun.

I would say many if not most adult leaders don't have the knowledge. That's the issue. A lot of people today come to scouting from urban or suburban backgrounds. They are not on listservs for state DEPs or Fish & Wildlife or public health services to get alerts about local rabies cases or new tick borne diseases or invasive or emigrating species. They are not out hunting or farming or birding or whatever in their spare time, they are at a soccer field. That's how you wind up with a scout leader entering a cave with an awake bear in it. They think black bears hibernate from December to Apri

We have had several serious cases in our units. Prevention really needs to include more than repellents and tick checks. BSA doesn't give any common sense guidance about camp site selection, tick activity, vegetation and areas to avoid, etc. Whether it's blue green algae or giant hogweed or rabies, there are a lot of outdoor concerns BSA is pretty silent on despite the fact that it is an organization that routinely puts kids out in the woods. There's a knowlege gap.

The problem is that the BSA curriculum is really outdated and minimal on some of these topics. Like 1960s level information. Rabies and tick borne diseases are two areas of particular concern. No amount of Be Prepared can help when there is a basic lack of conventional knowledge. We've been so focused on YPT and yet there are other areas that need to be looked at. If we survive bankruptcy....

Will send good thoughts your way. Be well.

There are so many outdoor issues that scouting does not train for or provides only cursory education about, I assume because things like rabies, Lyme disease, invasive plants that can burn you badly enough to land you in the ER, etc., would frighten parents.

How was the higher percentage of claimants filing in the BSA case over the others been determined? My thinking was that it was likely low due to the fact that many potential claimants are already dead, many abused children don't come forward until well into adulthood, and the fact that there is an inhibiting stigma attached to actually filing for a child sex abuse claim that could become public, or at least would become known in an attorney's office.

This makes me wonder how Friends of Scouting ever became part of scouting to the degree where it is utilized to fund salaries rather than specific needs. Many Friends Of type organizations often specify that their donations not be used for such. I've been on several boards -- for example, an Educational Foundation that supports a school district and a Friends Of board that supports a preserve. In both situations, requests had to be made to the board which weighed whether to fund the request. It was never for salaries, it was for program enhancements, perhaps urgent repairs, a new piece of equ

I don't understand underutilized camps either. I am in the middle of multiple councils. The ones who have innovative, three and four season programming open to the public and not just scouts are going gangbusters. The ones who regard their summer camps as solely a summer destination for scouts are struggling.

One thing we have to keep in mind is that scouting teaches one kind of leadership model: top down. The rank advancement system is built around that. In most cases, it tends to recognize and reward confidence and self advocacy and not necessarily competency and good outcomes. Scouting loses a lot of kids during the transition from AOL to first year or two of troop, and I think leadership plays a role. I have seen a lot of good kids leave in that time frame because they need confidence building in order to learn more about leadership and scouts is often not a good place for certain kinds of kids

That all seems reasonable assuming this precedent has already been set. I have wondered though why Eagle Scouts, juvenile and adult, who have committed illegal or unethical acts, have not had that status stripped by National. This is the first time I've ever heard of BSA tossing out a kid for something other than being the wrong gender or persuasion, or can others recall cases? One aspect of this that bothers me is that the kid sounds like he is of South Asian descent. If BSA doesn't have a history of kicking out kids and then the first one it kicks out is a minority, that is another bad look

Because I think we need to be looking at ways to make cubs cheaper and easier for parents? Practically everything else under the sun today for kids exists as a cheap pdf download. There is no reason to make cubs buy a hard copy book every single year. At the troop level they usually just buy one. That makes more sense although I don't even see the reason for a scout to have lug around a book either.

It is NJ. I can't seem to cut and paste the statement but it basically says what I posted.

Yes. Looks like it. I am unaware of any paperwork that exists at the COs that I know. Most of them are run by a vestigial group of people in their 80s. All they know is some nice scout person comes by to see them once a year to ask for a signature. In doing forensics for one of the units I'm affiliated with, we thought it was solely located at one church but about three months ago based on oral histories found out it actually started at another church in town. There is no paperwork whatsoever. I don't know how these things will be sorted out.

Our state United Methodist Church Council issued a statement today saying all Methodist churches should not renew COAs but have the council charter units instead to limit liability.

I'm not sure about that. I think LDS was partly to blame for membership declines before it left. It never should have been allowed to create a program within a program. Allowing it to do so gave the LDS undue influence over scouting policies in general, including a really onerous over emphasis on religion in the program. Without that influence, BSA likely would have been able to better adapt to changing social values. Without LDS, it would have been a lot easier for BSA proper to open up membership in general while still allowing COs the prerogative to follow their individual principles for t

One of the most alarming, although slightly funny, experiences I had on this subject was with my last AOL den. At their cross over ceremony they were so pumped and ready to be Scouts. All they wanted to do was camp, hike, shoot, high adventure, etc. And then the Scoutmaster got up and said a few words of welcome to them. He spent the next few minutes talking to them about leadership, hard work, merit badges and how Eagle Scout would look on their college applications; how important it was to "get it all done" before things got real busy for them in high school. He told them that the challeng

Combining 4th and 5th graders with kindergarten and first graders is one of the top reasons cited to me by parents as to why their older scouts stop coming to pack meetings or even leave scouts. For a youth organization, BSA often seems to know little about kids. The idea that 9 and 10 year old kids will enjoy "teaching" or "running" things for younger kids when they themselves still want to run around and have fun isn't all that practical. Most anything designed to appeal to 4th and 5th graders is likely to be too long for K-2. In the school system, we always broke things down K-2 and 3-4 or

I wish someone would make a documentary about this.

Whenever YP comes up we seem to instantly sort into these completely polarized nuclear bomb positions. Yes, BSA has improved its YP. Yes, it is harder to abuse children in scouting today. Yes, child sexual abuse is a prevalent problem in society. On the other side of the coin, has BSA done everything it can to minimize CSA? No, This forum is full of areas where BSA can and must improve. If scouting survives bankruptcy it will not survive a round two of child sexual abuse cases. That is simply the reality. One of the biggest conflicts I see is that one of the few action items in the

I keep getting confused on the fees since I'm no longer in Cubs. So National is now $72, plus there is a $25 new member fee, plus there is an adult volunteer fee of $48 -- that would apply to any parent who signed up as a Tiger den leader or assistant den leader, yes?

That's the way it has been. But maybe it needs to change. Top leadership being completed disconnected from program has been, in my opinion, a slow building disaster for BSA. I think senior leadership needs to have program on their dashboard so that they can better provide support to volunteers in the field. Focusing on fundraising totally detaches them from what scouts is all about. It hasn't been working. At all.

I've brought this up before and it's not entirely the same context, but there is a certain degree of forensics that can be done that can provide some validity even to claims that are missing information. If you know that Scout X claimed abuse during period Y in Z vicinity but is lacking some key data, you can match that up against similar claims made during period Y in Z vicinity. Meaning, if a scout forgot his unit number but knew the time period and location, if there are a dozen other incidents within those same parameters, it lends credence to his claim.

I was a Pack Committee Chair for many years, plus a Den Leader throughout, so I heard the parent feedback while also having to ensure the health of the program. - Be careful about fundraising. This was one of the biggest sources of parental dissatisfaction. It is good you are offering a buy out option. Many families will go for that. Others, however, will have to fundraise in order to participate. My advice is to offer a menu of options so that no one feels stuck with a fundraiser they can't succeed at. - Try to do pay as you go as much as you can. That way families can opt out if t