District Has Set Limits (7-MBs/Counselor & Max 5/Eagle)

[dluders 10]

Scouters in our district just received a letter from the District Executive that said:

 

a) "First, each merit badge counselor is to only register for seven

merit badges at one time. The types of merit badges can change throughout the year but will stay at seven."

 

b) "Second, the Eagle Board of Review has approved that all Eagle Scout applications can not have more than five merit badges from the same counselor."

 

What do you think about these pronoucements? Do you think that they're FAIR when other districts in the same council don't have these limits? Is it a uniform application of standards compared to other BSA councils in the country? Does your district/council have similar limits? The letter didn't say WHY these limits are in place.

[nldscout 18]

You need to ask the DE in writing where his authority for issueing this policy comes from.

 

A. He has no authority to issue this.

 

B. Its against national advancement policy.

 

C. If they denied a youth advancement because of it, national would squash him like a bug.

 

and send a copy of your letter to SE, Council & District advancement Chairman.

[ajmako 10]

dluders,

I haven't seen the latest Advancement Committee Policies & Procedures manual, so it's possible this has changed, but I doubt it. My advice is based on the following quote from my copy of the ACP&P. Before taking this advice you should find the latest copy of the ACP&P you can and make sure the policy hasn't changed.

 

"There is no restriction or limit on the number of merit badges an individual may be approved to counsel for.

"There is no limit on the number of merit badges a you may earn from one counselor." (ACP&P #33088C pg 13)

 

If the other districts in your council have different policies then by all means do as nldscout suggested. Write a nice letter to your DE asking for his authority for making this policy. You can point out that that Advancement Committee Policies & Procedures manual, which defines council and district responsibilities and clearly says there are no limits, does not support the change in policy. I would cc the District Advancement Committee Chair and the Council Advancement Committee Chair as well.

 

The answer to your letter will either be another memo recinding the first memo, or a letter to you explaining that: 1) the policy was created to address a problem with certain adults counseling badges they aren't qualified to counsel, 2) Scouts being signed off on hundreds of merit badges by the same counselor without doing the required work, and 3) the ACP&P is merely a suggestion. If that is the answer you get, re-write your letter and this time cc the SE.

 

None of those reasons are valid reasons for the limitations. The ACP&P is quite a bit more than a suggestion. It can't be overridden by just anybody. The only way limitations on the number of badges a counselor can counsel or the number of badges a Scout can earn from a particular counselor can be justified is by a change in the official BSA policy (what's currently stated in the ACP&P).

 

[Lisabob 13]

I think you need to decide whether this particular windmill is worth tilting at. Maybe the answer will be "yes." But other districts/councils do also limit their MBCs. In our district the limit was put in place a couple of years back and is set at 5 total per MBC.

 

Recently I've looked at our district MBC list and there is a paucity of counselors for many non-Eagle-required MBs. This might be due to the fact that many troops prefer to have MBCs for the Eagle-required badges "in house," and with the new policy there isn't room for these people to also counsel other badges. But the answer to that may be, do a better job of recruiting MBCs, rather than having one person counsel 20 different badges or something like that.

 

As for "fairness" when other districts in the same council don't have these limits (or have different limits) - fairness to whom? There's nothing saying a boy has to work only with counselors from his own district. And from the MBC perspective, why would you see the # of badges a person in one district vs. the other district may counsel as a fairness issue among adults? Is more necessarily better? I'm not so sure about that. I think the better question is whether there is a NEED (from a program perspective) to allow MBCs in your district to counsel more badges.

 

 

 

[dluders 10]

I thank all of the Scouters who have responded so far. It is most interesting that my district's edicts are in violation of the BSA Advancement Committee Policies & Procedures manual #33088D.

 

Since "Lisabob" did ask, here are the pros and cons of the 7-Merit-Badges-per-counselor rule:

 

PRO: Scouts can meet different Merit Badge counselors and develop their communications skills with unfamiliar people.

 

CONS:

1. Scouts already have to use the Buddy System to take classes from Merit Badge counselors. By limiting the number of different merit badges offered by Scouters in their unit (in their neighborhood), Scouts are forced to travel to other neighborhoods. This greatly inconveniences the two Scouts parents (who must drive the Scouts to/from the sessions). Parents already are short of time driving their children to/from sports, band, Scouts, etc.

 

2. Although there are ~114 different Merit Badges, Scouters will be reluctant to expand their Merit Badge offerings if theyre limited to just 7. Theyll tend to concentrate on the Eagle-required Merit Badges and perhaps the popular (easy) badges like Collections, Indian Lore, Pets, etc. How many Scouters whove done fiberglassing would sign up to teach the new Composite Materials Merit Badge?

 

3. Scouts in small units have only a few Scouters from whom to get advancements. Rural units are far away from most Merit Badge counselors in urban areas. Scouters in small units must often sign on to teach 7 or more Merit Badges to give their Scouts a fair chance of reaching their potential.

 

4. The 7-badge limit places an unfair disadvantage on Scouts in our district compared to other districts in the same council. There should be a UNIFORM, council-wide (or nationwide) policy to make rank advancement opportunities EQUAL regardless of location. If our district's policy is to be retained, then the other districts should follow the same policy to be fair to all.

 

 

[nldscout 18]

dluders

 

There is a uniform national policy. it is exactly what ajmako

quoted.

 

So if your council or district is setting a policy that contavines this, you need to protest it all the way to national if necessary.

[Beavah 205]

Yah, I think it's important to be a little bit circumspect about throwin' around words like "violation" and such. We have to remember there's a lot of other policies, rules and relationships (the real ones) which aren't part of that nice color glossy AP&P booklet which is put out primarily to be helpful to volunteers, and most of the text in ACP&P (includin' the text ajmako quotes) is not national policy. And we have to remember that councils, like CO's are in many ways independent of National and can in fact have local policies.

 

In truth, council-level restrictions on badges a MBC can counsel is a fact of life many places. In reality anyway it's a local discretion issue. So if it's something yeh disagree with, the way to approach it is politely, at the district or council advancement committee.

 

Me personally, I agree with dluders. I don't like the restriction. There's plenty of great scouters out there who are super counselors, and who have the knowledge to do 10-15 badges very well. If they have the time to give, why would we discourage 'em?

 

What unfortunately happens sometimes is young Scout goin' to dad or Uncle Fred or the one guy in the district who is known to be "super-easy" for 12 or so badges, which really doesn't help the boy much. Now, a good SM would be on top of that and not let it happen, but yeh know how districts and councils are always confronted by problems when the normal good Scouting stuff breaks down. So sometimes, we come up with extra rules to solve somethin' with a "policy" that we probably should have solved just by talkin' directly to the people involved.

 

So let's cut our district and council volunteers some slack for doin' their best with a hard job, and then tweak or push back politely where we have to in order to provide the best service for the kids. I think most of da time, 5 MB's from one counselor is plenty, really. Mostly, though, I really believe is that talkin' to people is nicer than sendin' letters or quotin' pamphlets.

 

Beavah

 

[LongHaul 10]

>>"There is no restriction or limit on the number of merit badges an individual may be approved to counsel for."

[FScouter 24]

"... most of the text in ACP&P (includin' the text ajmako quotes) is not national policy."

 

Really, that's a pretty wild statement. Our national organization publishes the Advancement Committee Policies and Procedures book and you're suggesting that it's not national policy? That is not to say that any individual, committee, DE, or district may choose to ignore national policy, but ignoring the policies of our organization is arrogant at best.

 

The DE in this case sees a problem, likely that of certain counselors signing off merit badges right and left with little consideration as to whether the boys put forth much effort to earn them. The proper solution would be for the district (volunteer) advancement committee to tighten up the the system for approving merit badge counselors. I'd guess the district has a weak or non-existant merit badge dean or advancement committee, so the DE has fast-forwarded through doing things the right way to finding an end result. His end result is a letter in violation national policy.

 

So the unanswered question is how much effort has the DE and the district committee expended to solve the problem the right way? If they haven't tried, I wouldn't cut them any slack at all.

[ajmako 10]

longhaul wrote: "What most people are failing to realize is that the above sentence does not say a person can counsel as many badges as they want. What it does say is that the Council Advancement Chair can at his/her discretion approve a person to counsel as many merit badges as the Council Advancement Chair feels they are qualified to counsel."

 

I don't want to nitpick, but that's not what the ACP&P says. It says the Council Advancement Chair is responsible for approving merit badge counselors and publishing a list of approved counselors. It says the Council Advancement Chair can delegate this authority to the District Advancement Chair. It says there's nor restriction or limit on the number of badges a counselor can be approved for. As far as I can see there's no authority given to the CAC or DAC to set limits on the number of badges a counselor can be approved for.

 

The only mention of qualifications is:

"They must be men and women of good character, age 18 or older, and recognized as having the skills and education in the subjects for which they are to serve as merit badge counselors, as well as having the ability to work with Scout-age boys."

 

There's nothing in there about deciding how many badges a counselor can be approved for--except for the sentence I already cited. So, for myself, before I sit back and let such a restriction stand, I'd want to see something in writing, not just "the ACP&P implies..." or "the ACP&P doesn't say we can't..."--especially when I have a far different reading of the ACP&P than whoever came up with the restriction.

 

It seems to me that placing restrictions on the number of merit badges a counselor can be approved for really doesn't solve any of the various problems such a tactic would be implemented to solve. If some Scouts earned most of their merit badges from a few counselors and there's some question as to whether or not those counselors even know the subjects, the CAC and DAC have a method of solving that (see qualifications cited above and uncited training responsibilities). Limiting the number of badges doesn't completely solve that problem.

 

[evmori 11]

My district limits MB counselors to 10. National has no limit.

 

How does the DE plan on enforcing B? No counselors are listed on the Eagle application, only the MB's & date completed? And why is the DE doing the District Advancement Chair's job?

 

Both are in violation of National policy & should be considered unenforceable.

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[Beavah 205]

Really, that's a pretty wild statement. Our national organization publishes the Advancement Committee Policies and Procedures book and you're suggesting that it's not national policy?

 

Nah, I'm not suggestin'. I'm sayin' it outright.

 

Here's how I think about it. National policy is set in a different way than the publishing of guidebooks - it's set by the national executive board. While staffers do their best (given time constraints and other things) when they put together and edit publications, that doesn't mean it's policy. Fact is, very little of what's in publications is policy.

 

Now, there are some things in ACP&P that are policy. For example, in my copy on pp16-17 are excerpts of real policies (titled "rules and regulations"). Another good example is on p.26, where it provides a quote from the National Executive Board policy on MB counseling. The book wouldn't have to say "this is policy" if everything in it were policy, eh? There are a few others. And there's a fair bit that outlines good procedure for Councils, and tries to support real policy with additional detail and information describing how National's folks that work on advancement think about such things.

 

But I don't think it's really accurate to consider every word of every document to be policy. Especially when I know that sometimes it's even junk that got put in by the contractor hired to do editing .

 

Back to the topic, though, I think Lisa'bob has got the right of this. I do disagree with the local policy of limitin' MBCs to a fixed number of badges. Councils can do it, I just don't think they should. But it's not really worth it to me to sacrifice my good relationships with fellow volunteers to make a big stink about it. Just not a hill to die on, eh? Rather be polite, raise it at a district committee meetin' and then let it lie. But it's up to dluders how much of his reputation he wants to put on the line over this issue in his area.

 

As far as a kid gettin' no more than 5 MB from one person, that seems to me to be a pretty good guideline to tell people. Wouldn't hold a kid up for it, but would push adults to pay attention because I think it usually would give kids a better experience. There needs to be some way of sayin' "Yeh shouldn't get all 21 merit badges from your dad the SM", eh?

 

Beavah

(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[Hunt 11]

They could enforce the Eagle MB requirement by insisting on seeing the actual blue cards (assuming they are used in that district).

 

I suspect that this whole thing arose out of an Eagle BOR in which a boy had a large number of MBs signed off by a single counselor. That's not to say it's a reasonable limitation, but you can easily imagine situations that might make leaders want to impose it.

[Beavah 205]

Hunt's point is a good one, eh? And it makes for a good question.

 

Can/should a district do anything if a SM is the counselor for every MB earned in his troop (or earned by his son, or...). I read some people as sayin' "no, nothing can be done, everyone is bound by the two sentences in ACP&P."

 

Seems to me that would be contrary to the principles set by the real policies, at least outside of the Lone Scouting program. So it seems to me to be a reasonable thing for a district or council advancement committee to want to address. Because councils in the U.S. range from geographically huge, rural ones to tight, near-urban ones, settin' one "national" policy just wouldn't work, eh? Which is why we have local councils and districts, to figure out how to interpret the real policies so they work in their area.

 

Dat's the BSA system, eh?

 

Beavah

 

[evmori 11]

They could enforce the Eagle MB requirement by insisting on seeing the actual blue cards (assuming they are used in that district).

 

I thought of that myself but that would need to happen at the National level.

 

I suspect that this whole thing arose out of an Eagle BOR in which a boy had a large number of MBs signed off by a single counselor. That's not to say it's a reasonable limitation, but you can easily imagine situations that might make leaders want to impose it.

 

And this is a problem? I agree a Scout should use a variety of MB counselors but there is nothing I know of that says a Scout must use more than one MB counselor.

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10