Tron

It's not essentially that way; hence the realignment and updates. True it can be tough to keep any repeat issues from becoming a boring situation; however, mastery through repetition is a thing, and changing up teaching style can alleviate these issues. As for the troops recruiting issue: the answer seems to be, that AOL is no longer meant to be a prep year to join a troop. The 6 month time frame has always been an issue; I have had many discussions with other den leaders and asked them how they fit the current AOL program into 6 months and no one can quite explain it. Based on personal experience most AOL den leaders are straight pencil whipping the program plan as it is designed right now.

Wrong, you must be registered to overnight with a troop. Parents can still attend to observe as long as they do not overnight.

The main point of these changes which most people seem to have missed is that each rank is vertically aligned now. This helps a pack in 2 ways. First of all a pack suffering from lack of leadership can more easily combine grade levels into a "mixed" den and keep the whole program running. Secondly the pack leadership can align when they do the related adventures month-to-month so that the monthly pack meeting/outing aligns with what the cubs were learning all month. This brings the cub program into alignment with how a troop should function (practice in meetings, execute in outings). These changes are going to be fabulous; they are going to lead to better recruitment and retention for both cubs and scouts bsa.

So the SM is off the mark. First of all, all aspects of the program are open to parent observation. Secondly part of the purpose of the committee is to monitor and potentially correct problems in the SM corps. My gut tells me that the SM is doing something wrong and was possibly challenged on it and is now trying to get rid of observation.

Small world, I know a SM who's troop travels to camp at Camp Seton in that council due to it's expensive but high quality program. Looking at the website I notice some staggering differences in the amount of information provided straight up vs my local councils website which is as lean as it can get with pre-covid out of date information and broken links. I also know that the Greenwich Council is one of the most financially stable councils in New England. Wondering if this is such a jump but; are some small councils prospering because of good information flow, above average economic area, and year-over-year quality programming?

Good points about making it difficult to get to the in person council events. Before your merger were CORs/COR delegates going to those things?

Yeah I see what you see. Looks like national is not forcing small councils to merge but is reducing their voting ability unless they grow to at least 5000 scouts. I sort of like this 1 rep/vote per 5000 scouts, it gives a huge voice to well performing councils that are recruiting like mad.

A good troop will have a calendar and be able to point a WDL to the most fun meetings but at the same time will allow potential crossovers to visit as often and to any meeting including the PLC.

Absolutely true. and?

It really depends on the scout and on the troop. A mature 10 year old that powers through their AOL can in my experience crossover the 1st day of summer break between 4th and 5th grade and have absolutely no problems. What do you think about parent meeting and explain the options for the scouts and explain the risk/reward? When a go getter Webelos crosses over a year earlier than expected with their AOL they basically gain an extra year to get their Eagle.

Is there some formula for condensing or dividing councils? The local council here and most of the surrounding councils are in the 4-5000 scout range; does that put them at risk of merger? That is interesting, do you have an example (I would like to check out a council website of such a small council to see what a council that small is up to).

Was the contribution to the fund listed only as cash because over 2 years passed between the sale of the camp back in 2021 and the actual post deposit of funds to the settlement fund? Meaning, since the cash had been possibly co-mingled for 2 years the amount tied to the sale of the property was no longer considered a property disbursement.

Didn't 86% of the plaintiffs, the BSA, and almost all of the insurance companies (the insurance companies that voted against the settlement are the ones trying to get out of paying anything IMHO) vote to approve the settlement? Over 250 million has been spent on legal bills so far; that's money that the plaintiffs are not getting; I think part of the equitable mootness are the judges trying to keep the lawyers from bleeding funds away from the victims.

Holy cow that is now a geographically huge council with a lot of population.

After reading the information at the 2 links I wonder if the cash contribution only issue is because the camp was sold a few years ago and not more recently?

The abused in scouting ads are going to slowly go away now that the settlement is winding down to the disbursement stage. The sad part is those ads are going to switch to something else now that the lawyers are getting paid out and wont have new money coming from scouting. Any bets that youth football is going to have a class action suit due to concussions and tbi?

There is a missing aspect here. Equitable Mootness also involves influence of simply ending/moving the bankruptcy forward or toward completion. In relation to this case Equitable Mootness is certainly in use to end the whole process and allow everyone to move forward from a common point in time and from a common standing.

Good points but not all troops have this problem. 2 local troops (to me) do have CO's that provide funds to the troops to help run the program; the question for parents in troops that are getting financial assistance from their CO's is what is that assistance going to?

Dealing with this right now; got my district on an issue at a local troop because several of the leaders refuse to accept that they can't call and have 1v1 phone conversations with scouts.

I liked his statements on closing the gray areas and cleaning up the training. The fact that someone at national is acknowledging that some of the training is unclear and creates gray areas is a BIG positive.

This is the core point of the lawsuit and bankruptcy for so many; they want BSA to fold, they are not seeking justice.

Your numbers seem quite accurate; however, the depiction of needing to do so much is not. The problem might not be the cost of scouting, but the expectation that scouts go SO far above and beyond to qualify for rank advancement, OA membership, etc ... Do I want my kids to go to Philmont and other high adventure bases? Yes, do they have to? No. Over the span of potentially 7-8 years of being a scout in a Troop most scouts only need to camp 3 nights a year. I think bad units make scouting too expensive; poorly trained leaders adding to the standard make scouting too expensive. In my area the average scout could easily get by and make it to Eagle on $300 a year if their unit doesn't add to the standard.

Most people have no clue what it takes to get onto a college team. The first thing people need are genetics; when both parents walk up with all of their 5'9" or less height and unimpressive body mass index I find it hard to believe that they think their kids are going to develop much differently and have any chance of playing sports at even a varsity high school level. I shall diverge from scouting a little to illustrate a point that I run into with parents in my area all of the time. So many parents just have no clue how sports work because so few people have ever participated in sports, any sport; even if they supposedly participated in one. Here is a great example! I've got a parent at a unit who has their kids in scouts and XC. The parent supposedly had a XC scholarship to a BIG 10 college. Parent routinely complains about the cost of scouting. Parent has never complained about the price of running shoes (I'm a runner and I go through about 4 pair a year at $100 to $150 a pop; my son had a gait analysis done before we purchased his new XC shoes and it was $165, and that's just shoes for an 8 week season). Same parent who is supposedly a runner thinks their one kid is going to run 4min miles (4min flat) and thinks that 5min miles are slow. I'm no expert but I do watch the Olympics and the top middle distance runners in the world are struggling to run faster than 4:30 a mile. This is a supposed subject matter expert in the sport and the parent can't even reconcile reality of cost comparison of an 8 week program vs a 52 week program; and the parent can't even reconcile realistic sport expectations vs some fantasy. FYI the top 13 runners in the world comprise less than 0.0000002% of the 621mil runners in the world. Somehow this parent thinks their kid is going to end up better than 99.9% of the runners in the world. Don't even get me started on the baseball parents; I played at a high level and some of these parents pull their kids from scouts for 6 to 7 months of the year thinking their kid is going to play professionally some day and I don't know how the kids made the no cut teams.

The price is nothing. Literally super cheap compared to most anything else. It's $80 a year, councils can match that and bring the total to $160. In comparison it's the heart of high school football season right now and the average family spends $671 a season on football; that's right $671 for 12 weeks of participation(about a million participants a season). The couch potatoes are about to spend $167 a year for Disney+ (just over 147 million subscriptions in the US). Scouting is cheap compared to just about anything else you want to compare it to; sports, gaming, tv.

That website is localized and I believe a Massachusetts based program. What I have heard rumblings about is a BSA national wide program called Catalyst BSA which is targeted at "scouts" in their 20s and 30s. Do other countries have adult scouting programs that BSA might have been looking at to extend the program longer/continue to grow membership revenue?