Tron

Why is this repeating? This is an old story and not true, this is not the last scout troop in Syracuse, it wasn't true when this got originally posted and it's not true now. WTF is going on here?

$170 sounds cheap compared to several other councils. District staff actually helping to set up a show and sell sounds awesome, my council could get way more sales if they did that.

more courteous .... that's some communist nonsense.

I remember PFDs being discussed the last time I did the online course; however, I don't recall it being like this or in relation to open water swimming.

Not how corporate lawyers work. Corporate lawyers are on retainer and get paid whether they work or not; so BSA's corporate lawyers are just being put to work right now. You're getting played by your lawyers who are taking a cut of your restitution.

Yeah that's the lawyers keeping you on the hook. They're playing you for more fee's and services.

To truly understand the program and how it needs to be ran, people just need to read so much more than they want. I've turned down being SM twice, and I'm bring probed for a third offer now; by the time I know the program well enough to be a good SM all of my kids will be in college 😛

It was free back then, but that was a completely different era. Clock hours and minutes were not bird dogged by the Department of Education; we literally did those courses during school time. I remember everyone doing the long term swimming training and evaluation for water survival being in the school pool for like 3 hours instead of going to regular class. With all the federal overreach into the local school programming the programs I went through could never happen during instructional time today; they would have to be all after school programs which the districts would have to pay teachers overtime for. Geez, this summer every pack in the area got a taste of those non instructional time janitorial fees at all the local schools ($150 an hour, they really didn't want the packs in the schools June-August).

The assets of those 82 insurance companies do not solely belong to any 1 policy. There is no guarantee that they even have the assets to pay anything out. I'll cede the fact that there might be more money, but there certainly isn't what you think there is. To your second point, they already have moved on. They are exciting bankruptcy and restructuring. Per your posted information BSA has signed over their rights to those other 82 insurance policies. BSA, it's councils, and the other entities that were party to the settlement are done, they're moving on. Legally they are done.

My feelings are hurt but it has nothing to do with this thread ...

Many many many decades ago Minnesota had this under a different name; it's where I went through my first wilderness survival and cold weather training. It was integrated right into the school programs if your parents allowed you to sign up. This was in no way shape or form a competitor to scouting. This will actually help scouting; as youth get a taste for the outdoors they will want it more and scouting is right there to help them get that more.

Well the settlement is 2.4B, there is no more money past that. The councils, national, the other payees who have signed have moved on, filed their tax and debt paperwork, and are moving on; yet there is this voice of the internet thinking 10s of billions of dollars are coming from somewhere. It's just not how financials of businesses or non-profits work; if there was additional outstanding debt for BSA they would have to report that in their filings.

My experience is that CORs are not engaged; they don't have their training done, none know that they are voting members of the district and council by virtue of their position. DE's and DC's do not engage the CORS because they don't want to lose control of the narrative or agenda. I would add to this that professional staffers making arbitrary decisions or attempting to micro manage has pushed so many good volunteers in my council out into the cold. There is training and a recommended method from national; none of the districts in my area have ever followed the national policy. I always wonder about the stupidity or ego of these 20 something DE"s that they think their method is going to be better than 115 years of refined experienced BSA policy. There is a point where just filling seats with butts and refining the selection over a course of years is the only option. My district for example is 100% non-functional. It's mostly our past DE's fault for selecting a total POS of a nominating chair and letting him gatekeep; our new DE is starting to own the problem. The POS nominating chair tried to exclude "his enemies" on the committee from the nominating slate a couple of years ago and the DC straight up stopped the meeting and told the DE he had better reconsider the slate and who was being excluded due to how much work they (the excluded) do. I always wondered why large troops didn't run their own summer camp. 5 days, 5 to 10 different merit badges. Lower costs, more flexibility in scheduling, less wasted time just running around.

I don't think councils care about GTSS. In my experience it's all about not having a near miss or reportable YPT incident. Units can basically do whatever they want as long as no abuse happens. I got pulled into some non-sense with a unit last year where they were repeatedly violating the GTSS. Event with parents and leaders asking me for help and guidance the key leaders of the unit wouldn't take any suggestions. I escalated the issue to council because I could see the situation spiraling out of control. Nothing was done, I started getting the cold shoulder at district and council level and meetings were always "we'll set that up later". Then a serious incident that pulled national in happened; that's the only point that anyone from district or council cared about GTSS. It takes a professional scouters job being on the line to bring GTSS compliance.

Let me start with I think there is unfortunately a lot of leeway going on because so many councils are in life support mode and don't want to risk a whole troop or pack dropping from the rolls. It is the wild west out there because membership numbers are so important right now and the paid scouters seem to want to keep their job more than running a quality program. We have a unit in my district right now that we all know is a paper only unit that the CO is trying to keep alive for some reason. A member of the key 3 was removed from scouting for committing and being convicted of a felony. No one is trained. No program is being provided. We're not even sure if the scouts are real; all we know is that the CO pays for 5 adult, 5 youth memberships and a recharter every year. The unit "meets" out of district. The unit never attends any district or council function. This is a prime unit for charter revocation, completely not running the program or even trying, yet nothing is done.

There's two things here, maybe related, maybe not. As an outsider with few years dealing with BSA (not involved with the settlement at all) I see things more from a corporate and legal lens. I agree with the assessment that doing the settlement fund piecemeal (going after councils, CO's, etc ... ) would have created a vast array of have and have nots. So many guilty parties (councils, units, charter orgs, perps) no longer exist, which would have prevented victims from seeking any restitution. I still struggle with these funded vs hypothesized fund numbers. What I know of nationals resources and debt and the councils local to me is that there really isn't much money out there, especially at the councils whom are mostly operating hand-to-mouth. To the discussion of Scouting America being around in the future; I have no doubt that Scouting America will be here in 100 years. I do think Scouting America will look a lot different, a lot more like how I understand scouting was 100 years ago. I think national is going to have to divest itself of a lot of physical property in order to get out of debt; maybe only Philmont surviving. I think the number of councils is going to shrink down to less than 100 (I think this will happen in the next 10 years). I think the number of council owned properties (camps) is probably going to shrink down to around 50 and start to get run more by professional adult camp staff and less by summer volunteers on a 4 season operational plan (the days of 7-9 weeks of summer camp run by barely paid OA seeking volunteers is coming to an end).

If you guys no longer have camps I bet you get absorbed by Western LA. For such a state with such a huge population the CA councils are crazy small.

When I last looked at them there was a link to download the PDFs but I do not see them now; and, they are piecemealed question-by-question. This is a clear indicator that national is doing something on the backend. Is another change coming? That being said I think we're going to see this evolve into a whole new program once the council evaluation has had a year or so to get ironed out. This sort of stuff should be mandatory to recharter. Feedback to the districts through national should be mandatory in order to get all of the paid scouters and big deal committees informed to the real situation at the ground level.

The own kid factor is a big one. I hold my kids to a higher standard to avoid anyone questioning the legitimacy of their accomplishments. Pointing out the own kid standard to this lady might make her tuck tail and run to a different troop.

34 Billion? If all of scouting in the world were liquidated there wouldn't be that much. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip; there is no way people are reading these payout matrix correctly, there is no way the court or parties involved could have been 31.6 billion off (when accounting for the 2.4 billion approved for funding at the end of the trail).

Never seen or heard of this before. I would ask her where she got the idea for recording videos of him performing tasks and see where the leads.

Well it's not anymore according the DC Circuit Court. That decision has created a space for our government to force a revisit to the SCOTUS decision to say burning the US flag is protected. When this eventually winds it's way back to SCOTUS I hope they thrown out Texas Vs Johnson.

Yeah the DC circuit court decision is total BS and it's not going to hold up under SCOTUS scrutiny; however, it has to get there. A lot of people are charged with BS crimes every single day but they don't have the money to fight-the-fight.

No that's not what I read, what I read is the DC Circuit Court has states that just burning the Israeli flag in itself is a hate crime.

I think GSUSA is killing themselves with the school grade bands for rank advancement.