Tron

What does bottom look like? I think we hit 730,000 with the Mar 1st membership roles cleanup. Is bottom 500k? 400k? I mean we're losing on average 100k a year right? Is it all hands on deck, the ship is burning in 2 - 3 years? There is no doubt that a key part of the problem is leader training: is when we hit 400k that national makes position training truely and absolutely mandatory?

So the meat of all three of these really leans into why scouting america has such low membership numbers right now. Think about how many dads/moms/guardians that have just rolled with the punch and walked away from scouting instead of transferring? Think about how many families meet a scoutmaster and experience a troop like your old troop and after that 1 year of membership just lapse and move on because they think the program is designed to be like that and how they can't expect something better in a different unit? I hope someone from national is monitoring this thread and packing this situation away for discussion at the NAM in May. Armymutt, you're doing right by your son and not giving up; and you're taking on all this stress and BS; most parents don't have the knowledge of the program and think it's the S-head unit or walk.

The cross council issue. That might be driven by the cross council reporting requirements. So as I understand it (by unfortunately being involved as a witness to an incident) if a reportable incident happens in a cross council scenario (resident camp outside of council for instance) the incident is automatically a national level incident and investigated by national (probably mostly through the involved councils investigating and reporting to national).

Wow. That's a rough situation, I think you're handling it the best you can. The only thing I think you should pursue is an email to your DE and whomever he is reporting to. You want to make sure that they are aware of the unprovoked threat against you by the SM. Dont do this to pursue punishment, do this for a paper trail. Make sure the other witnesses are listed in your email. That SM has a problem and the professional staff needs to know; that SM is going to escalate, it's just a matter of time. You dont want him stepping down as SM and then sliding his S-show into a district or council position.

When I asked my council about this it was explained to me to be more of an emergency clause. Things such as a scout becomes ill on a campout but cant abandon back to home for some reason, or perhaps a series of catastrophic equipment issues on a backpacking trip and the youth and parent must tent because its the only option to not violate other tenting rules. I was told it is not meant to be an alternative to managing a known persistent issue or condition that would be considered routine outside of scouting.

I think that has been replaced with only "opted out".

This is going to be a tough one right. Does supervision mean a leader can never step away even if there are at least 2 other leaders present? Let us spitball here with real situations that have happened in my presence over the past 2 years. What if the cubmaster (they call him the scoutmaster in all the news articles) had stepped away for something other than to vape outside? Same duration away, same timing, but instead of vaping he had to take an emergency call from work? Instead of vaping he had to take an emergency call from a family member? What if instead of vaping he was having an asthma attack and stepped outside to get fresh air and use his inhaler? What if instead of vaping he had to step away to eat on a medical issue based eating schedule? Left field scenario: What if the cubmaster had a scheduling conflict and someone else had to be the unit leader for the night and this had happened? In the last year my packs cubmaster has had to miss pack meetings due to work based scheduling conflicts and the CC or COR has had to step in to run the monthly pack meeting.

It's ego, ego pure and simple. I've literally put the current BSA document right in front of an unaware/trained leader and been told to take it away because the person already knows better. Unit training coordinators and commissioners can also do this (well mostly, EG: Wood Badge has to be entered by a registrar). Yes/No. In moments of reflection it can be tough to recognize lack of interest and care in a person with a person being overwhelmed right?

Totally correct. We (at least those of us at this level) are not privy to what exiting families are stating as to why they are quitting the program. We can guess as to the reason, I think a lot of us have a good "feel" but can't really prove what we think the issues are. Does anyone know, are there any real exit interview results out there for scouting? In all my time I have only been able to get 1 family to openly tell me why they really quit scouting and that led to a leader being terminated (but the damage was already done).

I saw in the news this morning that the family is now also suing national. I think I just heard an old dirty diesel bus turn over.

A lot of these problems are caused by poor or no training for "the professionals". I went to national training and my training records went to the wrong council. Years later I realized that my training was not on my official record. When I went to council about updating my records the first problem was council didnt even know that the training I took was a thing. I had to bring in all my paperwork and then educate my registrar on how the program exists and why I was trained.

Im torn here. I get that just adding units makes no sense from the standpoint of some new units just "steal" scouts from existing units. The flip side is that we do have scouting deserts that need new units. Perhaps there us a flip-flip side? What if our 40% churn and lack of retention is caused by all those stuck in their ways garbage units we all know about? What if the retention issue is literally only solved by having these rinky dink 1 patrol troops running around?

I don't think either of these apply to this situation. If the narrative is correct that a 12 year old basically romper stomped a 5 year old; like how do you plan for that contingency? How is a total beat down that results in broken bones that occurs in a crowded room full of other youth, adult leaders, and parent partners even on the radar for non-jail based cub scout packs?

I am not sure what your point is here. Putting yourself at risk by not following the advice of legal is always an option; but again go read the article, get informed, follow the rules or get burned. You're welcome for my warning.

I think we're going to find out who's correct. I totally see your argument, and in the past that line of thinking has been 100% accurate; however, the way charters, membership agreements, council charters, bylaws, etc ... are structured versus before has compartmentalized the risk away from national. They are getting horrible PR right now, the damage is done [in regards to image].

When you go somewhere with limited or no power. I know a scouting family that has an off the grid(ish) cabin and they don't allow their kids on electronics while there; I am not exactly sure what the source of power is but they don't let the kids drain it with their phones/tablets/whatever. Last year they borrowed pamphlets from me since their kids wouldn't have enough power to read the whole thing(s) digitally.

But Hawaii was different; it exposed that the NCAP process isn't as good as they thought. This doesn't touch national directly so would they get involved? I see this as compartmentalized to the council level at the highest, probably going to be pushed down to the unit level. Also looks like the details are developing. It appears that the leader being sued is being sued because the parents viewed him stepping out as a catalyst for control of the scouts to leave even though they admit there were at least 2 other adult leaders in the room at the time. The parents are also admitting that many other adults were in the room but somehow no one saw what happened actually take place. I know someone saw somewhere that the council was the CO but I can't find that; I did see in these articles that the pack meeting was taking place at the council headquarters. I think either way the council is going to be exposed to risk because the altercation took place on their property and wasn't reported in a timely manner. https://www.wtol.com/article/news/local/family-speaks-out-lawsuit-against-scouting-america-cub-scouts-leader-alleged-attack-on-son/512-9aff2dfd-6234-4126-a5c0-20c91ef3dd1c https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/boy-5-left-hospitalized-after-brutal-beating-at-boy-scouts-meeting-lawsuit-says/ar-AA1XR6Lm?apiversion=v2&domshim=1&noservercache=1&noservertelemetry=1&batchservertelemetry=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1 This is also going to cause Erie Shores to take a big hit on their Quality Council incident reporting scoring.

99%

That will be a whole different can of worms then won't it? Everyone will get hit with negligence, including the parents of the victim. We have packs that have been doing this as well. I am just saying that the new program is designed around facilitating this and it's now part of the program literature. If this is the case council and national are going to hang that leader out to dry SO hard. Again every council is probably watching this.

Didn't I already?

That's not how garrisons work. Just not. I guess another non-military non-veteran thought on something this week. The West Point camporee presents a unique situation where cadre and cadets put so much into it because so many have a connection to scouting back home and get to invite their home troop. Not even GSUSA can replicate that network and process. No other scouting organization will have that relationship, it took half a century and literally millions of past members of BSA to create that network and connection to the academy. If Scouting America gets kicked out of the West Point camporee it means the camporee is dead. I highly doubt any other scouting organization will have a relationship with the military like Scouting America. Congress no longer issues charters for some reason; I've seen how this affects newer veterans groups, too late to the table and unable to fill the same space as the older groups like AL or VFW; those groups become niche organizations that are mostly filled by politically hungry people unwilling to put their time in to get district or state level leadership positions in the older groups. Trail Life in itself has some other issues that will keep it on the outside, Right now the political arm of the military is VERY protestant and pushing a very protestant position towards things; however, most of the military historically doesn't practice religion outside of boot camp (lots of "no-religion" people suddenly become "Non-denominational Christian" in boot camp when they realize the church goers go to mass on Sunday while the non-church goers scrub floors and garbage cans). Then toss in that the overwhelming largest religious group in the military is Catholic and you have a big problem (The Catholic church endorses Scouting America as it's partner group through NCCS, and Trail Life is anti-Magisterium).

I have also heard that there are a large number of councils under conditional charter; that came out of last years NAM and was related to some sort of discussion related to the financial health meeting. I believe the number was somewhere between 20 and 50 councils left the NAM being told that they might be placed on conditional charter before the end of the year. As I understand things national is looking at a handful of metrics: rolling 90 day cash-on-hand, unrestricted endowment contributions/growth, membership in relation to total-area-youth, and an amalgam of safety. Based on the councils that got merged out last year and so far this year the trend seems to be that if a council is surviving off of their endowment national puts them on transitional or if a councils membership shrinks below some ratio they are put on transitional. A good example of the financial is Suffolk Council in Long Island and their financial situation. A good example of the membership was Ohio River Valley (who had everything going good except the whole council was basically a district in membership).

Awesome, you know you're wrong so trying to build something out of nothing now. Go read the article, get informed, follow the rules or get burned. You're welcome for my warning.

These numbers are highly suspect; except for the past 10 to 20 years in the United States universally transexuals have been a fraction of a percent of the human population across all cultures and ethnicities. Similarly the historic gay population has always been roughly 5% across all human populations regardless of culture or ethnicities. The United States is in a weird state. Personally I think it's all the medication and the agency producing power of the situation driving the increase. I have a teenage relative that was all in on being gay, using they/them, living an extremely alternative lifestyle and as soon as "they" stopped taking a cocktail of anxiety and depression medications "they" became "she" again, and suddenly had a boyfriend. I know it's anecdotal and 1 case, but watching it happen and hearing her mother describe the sudden change as soon as the medication was out of her system was an eye opener for me. Normally the supreme court only takes cases that have a national implication. I would suspect it's going to apply universally.

The lawyer and family are fundamentally reading the division by age stuff wrong. Cub scouts meet roughly weekly 2-3 times a month in dens (which can be but might not always be divided by age due to leader or program limitations); once a month cub scouts meet as a pack where all dens participate together. This will get ripped apart by any competent defense/litigation attorney. The lawyer and family are also misunderstanding the reporting requirements. The council is not at fault for the unit not following reporting rules. The fault is going to fall on the registered adult leaders (most likely the key 3 will get hit by the bus), and then the charter organization. This is simply logic, how can council be in the wrong if they were not notified because the unit was violating the reporting procedures? This right here is why our YPT/Safeguarding is online only; the councils lawyer will point out the youth protection training part that mandates reporting and will show negligence by the leader(s) and not council. Again the council cannot be at fault for the leaders not following the guide to safe scouting and allowing a prohibited event. The councils lawyer will again reference the mandatory youth protection training segments. Erie Shores and national are going to spend a bunch of money redirecting everything to the charter organization, unit leaders, and parents (involved that night). The entire organization is going to get a lesson in how everything is siloed and compartmentalized post settlement. The only risk to Erie Shores council that I can see is if the plaintiffs attorney can show that the council has a chartered obligation to ensure all leaders are trained and that the leaders present were not trained past 90 days so the council is at fault for some sort of oversight in ensuring trained leaders. If that happens it might actually help the rest of the program and force all councils to protect themselves by washing out all the F grade leaders who can't be bothered to do free online training.