malraux

While I understand the point, its hard to balance the goal of checking everyone who accompanies a group with a rule of every part of the program is open to parents to observe.

While I would not encourage someone to lie on the form, I will point out that only part C requires a medical person to sign. If you fill out the vaccination section in part B but have the wrong date, that's not the worst thing.

On some forums, some people's signatures can get really long/large, so its good to not have to scroll past a whole bunch of nonsense to follow a thread. It hasn't been an issue on this forum though.

Your name in the upper right corner of the page --> Account settings --> left hand column --> Signature

If it’s on a medical record somewhere, it’s fine though.

Looking at my mid 80s Cub Scout books, the requirements for rank there has not changed much at all in that time period. The mechanisms for it all has changed, but the underlying work is almost identical.

This is just dumb. Its a group with 23 thousand members. Its not elite. Its far more accessible than most other methods.

In addition, by bringing in very young kids into the pack, you really limit what the older youth can do. G2SS rules for the pack have to assume that many of the activities will be available for those kindergarteners. It gets limiting for the older cubs. In addition, I'll agree with the statements of burnout. Running a weekly event for 1st graders is tough. Looking at how other scouting organizations around the world do things, they tend to break up the k-5th grade youth into two different units. I think if we did that, it might help a lot. The younger group might meet monthly, do some fun stuff, and then be done. Then the older group can work almost like a 3 year Webelos program that focuses more on outdoor skills, commensurate with the older kids' greater independence.

In a way, that's good, in that there's clearly a potential resolution. Also bad because this whole thing is a house of cards that now needs another layer.

Anthony Berger is very active in the Facebook Cub Scout volunteer group. That's a mixed bag to say the least, but he's accessible.

Some councils and units conflict on this when the unit participates in none of the official fundraisers but only do events where the unit makes a big haul. I think one specific unit in my district had this as a threat over their spaghetti dinner fundraiser.

In our area, its more like a friendly agreement than a word on high. And if, as in our area, BSA as a whole only gets one opportunity to put a letter in the school newsletter/do a buzz up for one event, it makes sense to have it associated with a single pack. Its not that the packs cannot take someone from a different school, that happens a lot, but that the advertising in the school focuses on a single unit.

Nitpick again. That's 30k members, but adult volunteers are also registered members.

I don't see any evidence that they've grown that much recently. They were at 30k about a year ago, so they'd need to be at 50k now for that level of growth. Oh, they have a 70% growth in new members relative to their numbers of new members last year. But still only 35k members now. (And I find their membership numbers problematic in that it includes youth and adults)

Gender is whatever the youth puts on the application, ie identified gender. edit for link: https://www.scoutingnewsroom.org/press-releases/bsa-addresses-gender-identity/

This seems like an issue the troop committee could address.

A fair number of the esoteric merit badges are really basic introductions to a subject. Sure, the camping MB is a long term badge, but the painting or geocaching MB is easily done with pretty minimal work, or retention.

There’s a reason the bsa sells blank patrol patches.

While it does take adult effort, it also takes less people and it’s more rewarding.

If I were to magic wand change the cub scouting program, I would break k-2 and 3-5 into separate programs/units. The little kids would meet much less often and have the tighter adult participation requirements. Then 3-5 would expand the webelos program such that they could camp somewhat independently, have looser safety rules, etc. really 5th graders and k are very divergent in their capacities.

Oh yeah, I'm not going to disagree with that. If you want an official patch for uniform wear, then that's what the approval process is for.

I think there needs to be a distinction between official and unofficial patches for sure. But we certainly give away lots of other trophies or recognitions that are unofficial all the time.

The one issue I have with the current Cub Scout belt loop program is that way too many units want to hand out belt loop awards at the pack meetings. Its boring for the kids and breaks the immediate recognition design of the program. Belt loops should be a fast end of den meeting thing, not a ceremony at the pack meeting. Pack meetings should be fun events for all ages, not awards ceremonies.

While the BSA has a monopoly on BSA patches, they really don't have a monopoly on patches in general.

What is the right number of staff then? Looking at my council, its just under 30 employees, but that's counting all the DEs, the camp rangers, etc. Looking at the list, I dunno who I would cut next to improve financials. Plausibly either a DE (eliminate a district), or maybe one of the two program support positions. But of course that would push more of the work to the DEs, Field directors, or camping director and just result in less stuff getting done. Its also the least costly of the positions listed, not saving any real expense. Looking at your examples of needed work, recharter and summer camp: Recharter needs your DE, the registrar, and maybe accounts payable. Summer camp needs DE, Director of Camping Services, camp rangers, accounts payable, property management, etc. Most of the other positions at LC are either SE, fundraising people, or basic business needs. You also left out recruiting in your list, which is a lot of work at the DE level and typically involves a lot of pack and council working together.