CNYScouter

I think this is a great idea.

Our council is putting togehter a Scouting University and we would be willing to particpate in this also?

How is this project going?

I would like to see the BSA keep up with the times and add new MB's.

I would like to see the following MB's added

Skateboarding

Kayaking

Chess or Gaming (Board Games or games like Magic)

Surfing

Any other ideas?

CNYScouter

I am lokoing at buying my first dutch oven and could use some tips about selecting one.

The biggest question I have is about size. Any good rules or guidelines in what whould be a good size to start with?

Thanks

CNYScouter

a song form the 1930's is " Sunny side of the street"

Some good games that can be used for inside activities that were popular in the 1930's are Tidelly-winks and Chinese Checkers

Over the weekend I decided to quietly contact some of the other troops in my district and talk with the SM their program. This district is located in a mid-size NE city and its eastern and southern suburbs. Troops range from poverty level to very effluent neighborhoods. There are about 45 Troops in this district of which 15 are ScoutReach and located in high-crime, gang-infested areas with most of the kids living below the poverty level.

I narrowed my list down to the ones that were within a 15 min. drive and came up with 10 (including the Troop my son and I are currently in).

3 of the 10 Troops have less than 10 kids and have not had a new scout in 2 years or more. This due to all the cub packs in the eastern parts of the city have folded. I live in the eastern suburbs and 2 of the 3 packs in my school district are on the verge of folding. This is all due to the lack of adults willing to become leaders.

All 10 troops teach merit badges during Troops meetings in one-way or another. This ranges from one meeting a month being devoted to working on required MB to offering merit badges weekly but limited to 4 or 5 of the tougher required MB. None of these troops offered non-required MB at Troop meetings (unlike my sons current Troop).

When asked about a typical troop meeting none had patrol competitions and none had older scouts teaching the younger scouts, all instruction was done by adults.

All offered a very good outdoor program.

I did not ask how many of their leaders were trained and how their committee functions.

I would like to try to visit some of these troops but of the 6 other Troops I would consider 4 of them meet on the same night as my sons current troop.

I am discouraged at the choices and I am not sure what I am going to do.

I do know that his current troop is not providing the things I was hoping he would get out of scouting. None of the other leaders are willing to do training and even if his current Troop started to move in the direction to start delivering these missing scouting ideals he would be just about finished with scouts by the time we make this happen.

These questions came up about Individual Scout Accounts

How do you control what each scout can take out?

A concern came up if a parent is expecting their son to save the money in his account to use towards summer camp and the scout decides to use it for equipment instead.

Do you limit the amount a scout can remove at a time without his parents permission? if so, how much?

What rules do you have in purchasing things like knifes, axes and such? Do you need the scout to get parental permission before purchasing? And who decides?

How do you make sure that money is being spent on equipment? We have a few scouts that cannot afford to buy equipment up front and then be reimbursed. We have though about limiting equipment purchases to only the scout catalog and Camp-Mor catalog.

At our Troop meeting last I found out that up until a few years ago our SM and ASM did everything. CC and committee were in name only and did not participate.

I got the same answer about doing this fundraising as I got about why only adults teach scouts at meeting "the older scouts are so busy they would not make Eagle if they have to do anything else except work on MB".

I find it difficult to question SM desicions or policies as he has been SM at this Troop for over 15 years and was a SM for many years when he was younger. He has a Silver Beaver, is on the District Committee, District Advancment Committee, a Roundtable Commissioner and a very active member of our CO.

New CC is trying to take more of a role but has not had or is willing to go to training to learn how a Troop is run (are the rest of the leaders in the Troop). He does like the idea of individual accounts.

Committee meetings are held only twice a year (Sept. & Jan.) so it is difficult to bring up issues like this and get anyting resolved.

At this pointI would leave this Troop of another but my son has real trouble fitting in and has finally found a group of kids in the troop that he likes and does not want to switch. I am afriad that if I force him he'll quit scouts all together.

How many Troops out there use Individual Scout Accounts?

I am trying to get my sons Troop to setup fundraising so a portion of any fundraising goes into an accout for each indivdual boy.

I am running into a great deal of opposition to this. SM and ASM do not think that this is a good idea. They feel that it is a waste of time to spend the resources to do this as the ones that do the troop fundraising are the ones that can afford to pay for thier sons to go on these trips and the ones that don't do fundraising won't go anyway.

Currently all money goes into Troop accout and Scoutmaster decides how much each trip gets "subsidized" per scout.

Any thoughts?

WOW! Thanks for all the responses.

I want to reply to some of the comments.

Other adults see problems but it seems like they are not trying to solve them.

I asked at last committee meeting (only have 2 a year) why older scouts are not teaching younger scouts. I was told that if the Troop did that no one would get Eagle. The person who made this comment added that the reason he did not get make Eagle when he was a youth in the troop was that he spent all his time teaching other scouts. I got no response and the subject was changed when I added that part of becoming Eagle and learning leadership was teaching others. I did not add the fact that I earned my Eagle badge without ever taking a merit badge at a Troop meeting.

I feel I did make some headway. In dealing with the issue getting our boys to wear uniforms I suggested that the PLC, which means in our troop the older higher rank scouts, set a written uniform policy and it be distributed to the troop. I said that us (meaning the adults) telling kids that they had to wear their uniform would not work and this needed to come form our older scouts. This novel idea seemed to go over well.

It just happens that the SM, CC and I will be at a Packs Blue and Gold Dinner for a crossing over ceremony and I can ask some of these questions then over dinner.

I have never met our unit commissioner and in the past have found them to be not much help.

SM is on the District Committee and Roundtable staff so I am not sure I will see much help there.

The Troop conducts its own JLT. Im not sure what to think of this, as we have no trained adult leaders. I am also not sure what to think of the Quality Unit patch I just received as I do not see the troop meeting all the requirements

I am taking the SM training because the troop registered me as an ASM. To attend Woodbadge I need to be trained in my position.

It seems like the only place that the Aims and Methods of scouting are discussed are in the basic training. I have the Roundtable schedule thru 2006 and no topics about these are scheduled. They all deal with camping and outdoor activities.

Actually, I do have 9 or 10 years to make this happen. I currently have a younger boy who is not 3 yet and do plan on being around scouting for a while which is why I am taking training now.

Another concern I have is the Troops future. This troop has been around for over 90 years. However, in the last few years all the Cub Packs the troop recruited from have folded. I stayed on with the pack my son was in as CC due to a lack of leaders. Four years ago, the pack had 81 cubs in it. I just recharted the pack with 8 boys, 5 of them are crossing over to a troop this year. The only reason we are keeping it together is that 2 of the cubs left will be 10 this summer and can get their AOL and want to move up to the Troop.

The pack used to do very little in the way of recruiting and always got 20 to 25 new cubs a year. 2 years ago we saw a slip to 14 new cubs with only 4 being Tigers. We stepped up recruiting this year by doing a raingutter regatta at 3 different schools during their open houses in September. We also had posters in the schools and sent multiple flyers home with scout age boys. This year we only got 1 Tiger and 1 Wolf to join. I ended up sending the tiger to another near by pack. On top of this, we had 4 den leaders quit and their whole den went with them. 3 of them stated that they were too busy and Cub Scouts was taking up too much time. the last one got into soem leagl problems and pulled all three of her sons out of the troop. The CM and I have been working with our DE but he seems stumped as why we are having so many problems after many years of success.

From all of the posts it looks like I will have to switch troops or face a long uphill battle to change things.

CNY Scouter

Troop is talking about doing a can and bottle drive to earn money. No one in our group has done one before and I have some questions

I was wondering if anyone has some statistics about doing a can and bottle drive.

1) If we were to hand out flyers what type of response, can we expect? In other words, if we were to pass out 1000 flyers how many will we get bottles from?

2) How many flyers do we need to send out to earn $500? What is the average donation we can expect from each household that does donate?

3) The troop is in an urban area and the households range from upscale, high income to middle income families to very low-income sections. We have a large university near us also. Were will we get the best response from?

On our districts recent Klondike Derby we had a one pot meal cooking contest.

Some of the Patrol names of the winning entries were:

Yellow Snow Dogs

The Monkeys

Frozen Yetis

Macho Nacho

Currently the Troop my son belongs to does not use the patrol method.

Our SM has Woodbadge, but no other leader has any training

I will be taking SM training this spring and Woodbadge this summer.

I discussed training with our CC but he feels that training takes time away that he could be spending with the scouts and cant understand why I want to take more training.

Troop meetings consist of an opening, announcements, scouts doing merit badges or working on ranks (all taught by adults) and a game. Most weeks there are older scouts just hanging out and often do nothing. We have low attendance at most camping trips (all planned by SM or CC), but almost every scout goes to summer camp. We can not get our scouts to wear uniforms and have boys in leadership rolls but are doing nothing in that roll.

One of the problems we have is that our SM and ASM are very long-term Scouters. SMs training came back in the 1960s and ASMs were scouts in the troop when they were kids and have been with the troop ever since (35+ years) and run the troop the way it was done back then.

From doing reading about SM training and the Patrol Method, it seems that the issues we are having can all be solved by using the Patrol Method and moving towards a boy run troop. I have overheard other leaders in the troop say that boy-run troops do not work and we would never go that route.

My son likes this troop and does not want to switch. He will easily earn his Eagle rank if he stays with this troop, but he will be missing out on the other aspects that scouting should be bringing.

The Troop has a committee meeting this week and what would be the best way to try to introduce the idea to use the patrol method and become a boy run troop?