yknot

I can't think of a single media occasion either in all the years I've been involved even going back well before pre bankruptcy days. Only time I remember to the membership was Surbaugh asking us to fill out surveys about opening up to girls and how whatever was decided would be implemented gradually. Then about three days later it was announced as already happening lol.

I meant what I said -- promoting from within hasn't produced great leaders for us. YMCA, on the other hand, whether he came from within or without, seems to have a good leader. YMCA has weathered its share of controversies over the years but seems better positioned than ever before. Can't say the same for BSA.

Agree. Most importantly, he appears to have provided commonsense leadership that allowed what seems like a very similar kind of organization to pivot and remain relevant and active through the pandemic. YMCA seems very well positioned to have a successful summer meeting its mission -- which is serving kids. Somebody like this at the helm could help BSA post bankruptcy. Promoting scouters from within is overrated in my opinion.

I'm not sure it's a secret. I think it was a conscious decision on the part of BSA not to address this because it would have resulted in a loss of membership. As far as LDS, I count that as one of BSA's leadership failures. They should never have allowed an organization to create a program within a program. BSA was not the LDS church, but the situation resulted in the BSA adopting many LDS positions that warped or outright paralyzed BSA in it's efforts to run a nationally focused organization.

OK well that's their reasoning, but that wasn't what I was referring to. I don't want to get into a further negative discussion about BP on a scouting web site, but there is an awful lot out there to read about him that has nothing to do with isms. He came up with a great kid program but he was a very strange guy. If you don't want to hear it, leave it there. If you are interested, there are a number of books out there beyond what was published through official channels. I got interested in this because I wanted to develop some historical perspectives in how scouting got where it is now so I went back to the beginning. There is a good book by Tim Jeal that is fair in how it recounts his talents and his flaws.

I don't know why they changed but outside of scouting BP has a problematic history that has nothing to do with cancel culture. Most scouters just know the official biographies about him. There has been a lot more published, some outright scurrilous, some serious research, that has to be taken as a part of the whole when considering him. For my part, I think he had some great insights into the minds of kids and how to engage them in constructive fun - an approach that I think works for girls as well as boys by the way - but he was by no means the paragon that the scouting world has set him up to be. I don't fault people for being a product of their time but he had some weird interests including a morbid fascination with executions. He was not a normal guy. .

I wasn't arguing with you I was supporting what you said. Edit: Or at least that was what I was trying to say.

Yes, it is not a comparable situation. In a healthcare system you could have claims for everything from a radiation patient being improperly blocked to an intubation injury in the ER to a patient slipping in the bathroom. A couple of other differences are in the fact that the medical arts evolve rapidly unlike scouting so you can be in new territory almost daily. There is also a huge oversight system in place. There are professional and institutional standards of care and medical and ethical review boards. As we all know, despite all the measures in place, problems still happen but the negligence there is largely one off. Healthcare systems are also subject to outcomes management and if say a large percentage of infants are dying in a NICU, that trend becomes known, is analyzed, and is addressed. It might be just an unhealthier patient population, or there could be something amiss in the unit. Negligence might be found but it doesn't usually continue. That kind of review does not occur in scouting.

Tough situation. I'm also not convinced of the post Covid membership rebound for scouts. Over the past 14 months, a lot of kids and families found out they have other interests.

It's a weird situation. I don't understand adding new fees or raising rates at a time when most other youth organizations lowered rates or gave discounts last year. On the other hand, BSA is bankrupt and apparently desperate. I think it's a case of BSA's reality being out of sync with almost everyone else's reality. Sadly, so many times that has seemed to be the modus operandi.

I'm not sure what you are saying. The HPV vaccine while pediatric is an outlier in many ways, primarily because it is not part of the battery of vaccines we were discussing that are given during infancy and toddlerhood. Maternal antibody interference with that one is also not much of an issue? However, my kids received HPV exactly because of the statistics you cited. It's not the cost so much with titers it's more a question of how reliable some of them are for certain diseases. The body of research is growing but titers don't always correlate to real world protection. Immune response can be very individual and influenced by many factors, some of which are not well understood.

Veterinary pediatric patients are also vaccinated with multiple vaccines on an aggressive schedule and it has more to do with waning maternal antibodies and the nascent immune system than human behavior. I have to believe that's similar in people.

I've not heard of any scout camps requiring that yet. I know some local camps have been considering it and the ACA recommends it. Right now what I've heard so far is staff have to quarantine and test before arriving on site in our state.

And boy. Those relatives.

I didn't take it personally at all -- no apologies necessary. I share what you are feeling. We are all so activated by current events, even the more more level headed among us. It is a struggle to discuss things and not instantly snap into reactive mode. I'm churned up every day despite not wanting to be and trying very hard to hit the pause and edit buttons.

I don't know what you're reacting to but I haven't seen much specific to scouting other than some COs that are hyper concerned about liability who may require it, at least of their adult leaders. I know some summer camps have required all staff to be vaccinated this summer. Have not seen anything yet about kids. This is just something we're all going to have to navigate in various settings from work to travel to schools and other activities as we (hopefully) head out of the pandemic. Just as I think anyone has a right to be vaccinated or not, I also think individual entities whether businesses or churches or community groups have a right to decide what they want to do based on their own business plans and liability concerns. Most of the universities in my state have already declared that all students and staff have to be vaccinated by fall. Some people are not happy but they've been told they can attend remote. Nothing has been said at the K-12 level, but then those age groups engage in less high risk behavior. If vaccination does become mandatory for school attendance at least for the 12-17 age group then the discussion for scouting will kind of become moot.

It depends on who is asking. HIPAA only applies in the healthcare setting and it merely protects against providers sharing your medical records against your will. An employer, school, business, or anyone who isn't affiliated with those entities can legally ask your vaccine status. They as of now can't mandate it, but they can make decisions based on whatever information you supply on whether or not they want to hire, serve, or admit you. In other threads it has been discussed that while BSA may not require a vaccine for scouting participation, a CO certainly can based on what they think their liability risks or even just unique levels of concern are.

Only N95 masks provide near total protection to the wearer but other masks depending on type provide some protection to the wearer ranging from 10% to 70%. Significant enough to help cut down on transmission and infection, especially when the ambient viral load is decreased by others also wearing masks.

I was about to click thumbs up on your post until I got to your comment about masks. That point is disputed. This is anecdotal, but I regularly monitor several high school district Covid dashboards as part of doing a regional Covid update. There have been multiple outbreaks among high school sports teams. There were several outbreaks in fall sports on teams that were practicing solely outdoors but had some degree of close contact, e.g., football. Keep in mind, no one is using the locker rooms this is just kids on a field and masked until it's time to run. When the winter season started and masks came off for indoor basketball and hockey, there were more outbreaks. The schools did not see much transmission among masked children sitting six feet apart in classrooms, even during winter months. This indicates there may be some value to mask wearing.

Compared to other youth activities, scouting takes a massive volunteer effort. At the troop level, parents are committed to getting their scouts to Eagle so that sometimes motivates them to step up. At the cub level, the parents aren't yet that invested. Our membership decline has been drastic. Many people are expecting it to spring back up after Covid. I am skeptical. As you state, many families simply are not wanting to return to pre pandemic levels of activity and something has to give. Sports are easier to participate in and administer. Local nature centers and park departments also stepped up to the plate last summer and offered a lot of Covid safe programming. I'm affiliated with three centers and Covid was the single best thing to happen as far as membership. Rolls are way up and programs are full. Parents of younger kids have figured out that they can get their outdoors experiences in by signing up for a family hiking or wildlife program and not having to worry about BSA paperwork, training, or running dens. This is hurting cubs in our area.

Thank you. This is an excellent post. We have some great, very informative commentators on here but this is the best explanation I have seen of the insurance side of the equation.

Are you referring to the 700,000 scouts she cited? I believe that is a reference to what looks like the latest membership figures that were posted here a couple of weeks ago. It shows total membership of cubs and scouts is about 750,000. It seems numbers dropped a bit more in 2021 after all the paperwork cleared.

Look at the program. Other than troop level camping, little of it requires remote wilderness locations. Not that I like that, but you could easily use an urban base to funnel youth into more outdoor programming. Most urban outdoors oriented programs do the majority of their preparation in urban settings before they head out for camping adventures. We have several by me. I'm on the fringe of an urban area and there are millions of square feet of vacant warehouse space available for lease, including with parking lot areas. Brownfield areas as well that could be developed with an urban partnership. You can be outdoors in the city. I'm in the mid Atlantic. Tons of places that could It's a failure of imagination not to see how this could work.

I don't see how any Chapter 11 reorg plan that doesn't seriously address YP issues going forward can be valid. Without better standards it's clear any continuing scouting entity will face additional claims and be unable to pay anything meaningful into any future settlement trust let alone survive. I have also not seen where any plans have addressed the issue of affordable liability insurance. Who will insure any kind of scouting endeavor post bankruptcy reorg at an affordable rate? The assumption that there will be 1 million scouters in 2025 doesn't address this issue. What if registration fees have to be $500 to cover insurance?

Not to answer for UK, but I would imagine it was because it was a time when you only needed one dedicated adult to work with at risk youth. Couldn't happen today without paid staff. I know in the mists of time BSA tried to run some urban programs and I don't recall what happened. What I do know is that present day other youth organizations run showcase programs in urban areas and there is kind of an existing model. They know they can't replicate it in every area, but they pick a few high profile places and invest money in staff and facilities to run the program at those limited sites. At the very least, they learn a lot about how to serve these kids, families, and communities. From what I know, although maybe someone else has better info, in scouting it seems to be these attempts have been very one off. Someone in a district or council gets an idea they want to organize one, and they mostly do it on their own. A different model, in a post bankruptcy world if we ever get there, might be to ask every council to sponsor an urban unit somewhere in their territory and every unit has some assigned responsibility to help. We've got something like this in our regional sports league. The various member clubs each adopt a special needs facility. The various teams all take turns running practices and games. Another organization has a facility in an urban area and has "brother" or "sister" groups who are formally affiliated and help funnel money, expertise, and volunteers to the urban program. Scouts does a lot of service in the community. In the future, in order to survive, it might need to look at ways to funnel some of those service hours into the support of scouting. Instead of food drives, drive to the city a couple times a year to help staff events for urban units. Edit: I guess my point is, BSA is fighting to retain expensive HA bases but why don't we also have Urban Adventure bases in places like LA, NYC, Chicago and Atlanta for example?