seattlecyclone

7 minutes ago, Ojoman said:

My question would be how well do you retain cubs? My son's pack had basically 100% retention from Tigers (pre lions) to crossover. We only dropped families that physically moved from the area. Most packs membership is pyramid shaped with a lot of k and 1's a bit fewer grade 2 & 3 and fewer still at 4 & 5. I would consider 80% retention a decent job and 90%+ excellent. Maintaining size by recruiting a number each year to replace drops is like trying to fill up a bucket full of holes. Unless the new recruits are offsetting the crossovers there may be a quality issue which would include not having a summer program. Why give up the best months of the year for outdoor program and activities? 

I don't have retention statistics at hand. I get the sense it's quite high though. Our membership pyramid is a bit different than "most," I guess. We have no Lions, one Tiger den, and two dens of each other grade. First year Webelos are the most numerous age in the pack this year, with Bears and second-year Webelos right behind. Some kids join in first grade, recruit some friends to join them for second, and generally stick around through the rest of the program.

Our pack generally takes a break during the summer. There was nothing on last year's calendar between mid-June and late August. It doesn't seem to have any negative impact on enrollment. We have about 90 kids year after year, and often have to refer some prospective families to other packs in the area because any larger would be unmanageable. 

3 hours ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Yes, but why can a Webelos Den do 2 nights on their own, but the entire pack cannot? And why limit packs to one nite, unless it is council run?

Yep, all fine questions. What are the risks inherent to a two-night camping trip that are not present for a one-night excursion? How much extra would it cost to add these additional risks for two-night trips to the insurance policy? Why was the potential benefit to the program considered not worth this cost, and who made that decision?

As a simple parent of a Cub Scout who has been on a few great two-night trips with my kid and has been looking forward to more, it's not at all clear to me how this rule makes Cub Scouting better.

4 hours ago, awanatech said:

District & Council leadership have been known to turn a blind eye to many things that are actually against BSA policy. 

Rules that nobody is interested in enforcing, for decades on end, are effectively meaningless. So...does this "clarification" signal that people will now become interested in enforcing this rule, or is it actually true that nothing has changed here?

My son's pack has been doing multiple two-night outings each year for decades. I find it hard to believe we could have kept that a secret from our district and council leadership for that long, and AFAIK nobody has told us to stop doing this before. It therefore seems far from universally understood that this rule has been in place this whole time.

3 hours ago, BetterWithCheddar said:

Maybe I'm just not following 100%, but are you suggesting that over time, wages seem to get dragged upward by industries experiencing high productivity growth (software development, for example)? 

That does seem to be Baumol's effect in a nutshell, yes.

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But then how do you reconcile the fact that many politicians would have us believe wages have not kept up with inflation over the long run? (I'm genuinely curious)

Every year that inflation exists and Congress doesn't increase the minimum wage it's true that minimum-wage workers fell behind a little bit. However on the other hand it seems that median-wage workers' wages tend to trend upward in CPI-adjusted dollars. Over time those wages have tended to be able to purchase more goods and fewer services.

Whether wages in general go slightly up or down in inflation-adjusted terms is not the main point here however. The point is that all industries are trying to attract labor from the same human population. The industries that are able to reduce their labor needs year after year will generally be able to see slower price increases than industries that are unable to do this.

2 minutes ago, BetterWithCheddar said:

No doubt, that's the biggest driver. 

Over 25 years, it would be reasonable to expect Inflation to cause prices levels to double. Yet, the FOS amount in my council has tripled during that same time. I suspect membership has declined without commensurate cuts in professional staff or facilities (thus leading to a higher cost per scout).

The CPI has increased 1.8x in the past 25 years. That's far from the only measure of inflation though. College tuition has increased more than 3x over this time period, while other things have increased slower than the CPI.

Discrepancies of this type are described by the Baumol effect. Service-heavy industries such as universities and medicine (and Scouting administration) increase in price faster than overall inflation.

The average college lecturer is teaching about the same number of students as decades ago. Their productivity hasn't increased much, but their pay needs to keep up with wages offered in industries that have increased in productivity through greater automation, else college professors would leave to go write software or manage a factory or do something else that has benefited from these productivity gains. 

Same goes for Scouting. Have technological advances allowed one district professional to manage significantly more program activities than decades ago? If not, you should be unsurprised that this cost has increased faster than the CPI. This goes double if the number of Scouts has decreased over that time. While certain tasks do scale with the number of youth served, there's a certain amount of fixed overhead as well.

All of this isn't to say that we shouldn't examine council spending with a critical eye to judge whether they're a top priority for our charitable dollar. We can and should! Just don't be surprised to find that there's no more "fat" to cut than there was in our youth, and costs have increased faster than the CPI anyway. Labor (people) increase in cost faster than things do.

22 hours ago, BetterWithCheddar said:

• I have an FOS flyer from my youth asking for $129 (the cost to support 1 scout for 1 year). Mentally, I was preparing to make a donation of around $200. Now I see the campaign is asking for $401 (the cost to support 1 scout for 1 year in 2023). What the heck happened there?

I remember regularly stopping at McDonald's on the way back from Scout trips in my youth, and I could buy a cheeseburger for 89¢. I haven't been back to McDonald's much since, but we stopped in at one again on the way back from a recent outing with my Tiger Cub. A simple cheeseburger was $2.29! What happened there?

We all know what happened. Inflation. Everything costs more than it did when we were kids. This should not be a surprise.

4 hours ago, qwazse said:

@InquisitiveScouter, keep complaining about it and those 19-20 year old ASMs will be reclassified as program participants.

I want to make it clear how much of my life involves deeply personal one-on-one conversations with 19-20 year olds of the opposite sex. It is very hard for some young adult women to navigation their world — many are facing abuse, caregiver burdens, financial stress — and they open up about it to very few people. They often look for second father figure and, along with their friends, arrange a meeting with him. Sometimes that person is me, often I can rope a second elder into that conversation, but often time is of the essence and we can’t ill afford time to screen that fellow qualified elder by sex.

This is how the real world works and will continue to work. By imposing this kind of restriction, BSA will remove itself further from meeting the needs of young adults.

The problem of course is that every once in a while that father figure takes advantage of the situation and exploits the young person seeking guidance. Given past events and current litigation, I totally understand why the BSA would want to have strong rules prohibiting such one-on-one conversations from happening under their aegis, even though they're a positive thing over 99% of the time.

20 minutes ago, Oldscout448 said:

But if the universal emblem is not worn, does it not then become just another jacket and therefore not subject to the rules and regs of outrageous Insignia  Guides?   

My gut feeling would be that the garment is an official uniform component and a lack of one authorized patch doesn't entitle you to wear a bunch of unauthorized ones. Would the Uniform Police be cool with it if I put a bunch of wacky patches all over my tan uniform shirt and wore it that way to Scouting functions, so long as I removed the purple fleur-de-lis first?

That said, I've never even been part of a unit where the leaders even expected the members to wear the officially-required pants as part of their uniform. Policing the officially-optional uniform jacket would be the last thing on anybody's mind.

I recently unearthed my box of Scouting memorabilia from when I was a boy. Included was a copy of the official insignia guide, (copyright 1986, printed 1993). The publication had this to say about jackets and jac-shirts:

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Jackets and their Insignia

Red, blaze, and blue jackets in nylon, wool, and poplin are available for optional wear by youth members and adult leaders. The proper universal emblem for the branch of Scouting the wearer is engaged in should be worn on the left pocket or, in case of a zippered jacket or the action jacket for Explorers, above the pocket. The Philmont bull emblem is especially designed for the red wool jac-shirt to be sewn on the left shoulder above the pocket. On all jackets the Philmont Scout Ranch, Philmont Training Center, or high-adventure base emblems may be worn centered on the right pocket or in the same relative position if there is no pocket. Explorer posts may wear their post or special-interest emblem on the right sleeve 2 inches below the shoulder seam or they may elect to wear a 6-inch emblem on the back of the jac-shirt or the action jacket—not both. The Order of the Arrow has adopted the jac-shirt as its official jacket, and members may wear the 6-inch national Order of the Arrow patch centered on the back. The large Philmont, NESA, jamboree, National Camping School, Scoutmaster Award of Merit, and international participant emblems are approved to be worn on the back of the jacket. Only one such emblem may be worn at a time. The Venture/Varsity letter may be worn on the center of the right side of the red or blaze nylon or poplin jacket. In all cases, the lightweight jacket is an alternate for the jac-shirt, and this insignia may be worn on it in the same way.

That's all it said about that. No pictures or diagrams or anything. So at least at that time, there were various types of jackets that were considered an official but optional part of the uniform, and a certain limited set of patches was officially approved for wear on the jackets. 

Thanks for the helpful notes everyone! I'm definitely open to being a den leader, though if there's another willing parent in the den who has been a Cub Scout parent before I'd be happy to defer that responsibility to them because they'll probably have a better sense of what to do. The pack's new parent orientation is in a couple of weeks and we'll see what comes of it. I like FireStone's viewpoint of uniform and insignia as a conversation starter. I'm not interested in being ostentatious with it or anything; it's all about the kids, and if I can use my experience as a positive example all the better.

3 minutes ago, RememberSchiff said:

@seattlecyclone  welcome to scouter.com.  No problem wearing an old uniform.

Interesting. I figured there'd be some rule against wearing a uniform that was discontinued before any of the youth in my unit were born; would be less "uniform" looking that way. But if it's allowed...well, a Scout is thrifty and buying new clothes unnecessarily is bad for the environment, so I may just keep the old one.

Nice to be here! I just enrolled my son in Cub Scouts for the fall when he starts first grade. I was a Scout myself as a boy, earned my Eagle award some 20 years ago. I tried my old uniform shirt on and it still fits! But then browsing the web I learned the uniforms have been redesigned a couple of times since then. Oh well. Looking forward to going on this journey together with my son, and helping the pack go however I can.