Can a unit switch districts

[SSScout 1615]

 

Scout "Districts" exist for two reasons:

ONE: The Council needs smaller organizational junks to help keep track of the numbers. DEs are the paid folk that head up these mini fiefdoms. They get paid for their numerical reckonning of these areas. Bigger Districts, bigger numbers, ultimately bigger pay. Younger DE's get the smaller and more run down neighborhoods (read "Districts"), then get promoted (sometimes despite their desires) to other Districts.

TWO: The volunteers need "neighborhoods" so they can have opportunities to cooperate and work on things that no one unit or person could accomplish ( bigger camping activities like camporees, Merit Badge Days, just meeting folks of like Scoutmind, getting a further approval for Eagle projects, etc.)

Sometimes the two don't mesh. When I started in Scouting as an adult, I worried about my unit and my son's activities in it. As I got to know the "territory", I discovered the DISTRICT. Cool, a DE to talk to about problems, Webelos Weekends, Camporees, other Scouters. But DE got promoted. Three times, our DE was promoted, or resigned.

Then, it started.

We have not physically moved, or our units moved or otherwise changed, but in the last ten years, I have worked in 6 (six) Scout Districts. I have the patches to prove it. . These re-arrangings were foistered on us by Council, and every Scouter I know of has responded with "ho-hum. Here we go again". The DEs have been shuffled, and the usual District committees have been assigned and re-assigned and staffed by much the same good people each time. Our goal is to have Camporees, and PWDerbies and Klondikes, and Shotgun/Rifle Meritbadge days and CSDCs (the same three sites we have always had) and all the other stuff a Cub or Boy Scout might come to expect in an active Scout area.

When the Districts were re-designed, the volunteers said "thank you sir, can I have some more" and adapted. The email newsletters were divided and rewritten and shared. The various committees were constituted. Commisshers who used to roam the big prior District now lived in District 2 and served the units in District 1.

In some ways , the new present Districts are better: smaller, more intimate (?), more neighborly. In some ways, they are worse: What happened to that fellow that always planned our PWDerby? Oh yeah , he's in District 3 now. Mmmm. Guess no District PWDerby this year. We can visit District 3, they said we could.

DEs are more available. I have met each of the three(3 Districts, now, instead of one big county wide District. Now.), but that does not guarantee that the responsive, personable, Scout-dedicated fellow we have now will be there in another year. Or that the prig of a martinet that District 2 seems to have will not be ours next year.

Still, the District is what we are given as a tool to use for our Scout "networking". We know which SM does a good camporee, which IOLS trainer does Totin' Chip and Whittlin' Chip right, which CSDC is more pioneering than the others, and which has the archery range you want your son to learn on.

 

So what else is new?