Eagle verification Mess

[k9gold-scout 10]

In our area the Dist . Advance. Chair. receives a copy of all advancement in his district, including the blue cards. The council keeps a copy ot the report in each units' folder. They only forward a brief total report to National. The advancemnt person may or may not look at each report. The council only has an office person review the advancement when the Eagle Book and application is turned in to schedual a Eagle Board.

[Bob White 20]

The council's job is to record and maintain advancement records. The unit's adult leadership including the advancement chair are responsible for verifying advancmnet before submitting the name of the scout to council.

 

In the "Advancement Committee Policies and Procedures" manual, the first responsibilitie listed for the unit's Board of review is "To make sure the Scout has done what he is required to do for the rank."

 

That puts the responsibility squarely on the BOR.

 

Bob White

[rlculver415 10]

AdvanceOn -

 

In our troop, we do double check the Council records after a scout passes the Life BOR - and for this very reason. Often our records are more accurate than theirs.

 

We stress to the boys the importance of keeping their blue cards in a safe but findable place, in case verification is ever necessary.

 

In my opinion, which counts for little, the boy should get his Eagle. It wasn't his fault the adults messed up the records, and he has completed everything required of him.

[bt01 10]

How can a Scoutmaster or the Board of Review miss the merit badge count???? Either the scout has the merit badges or not??? I was looking at the requirement for Star and it says; earn 6 merit badges, including 4 required for Eagle. For Life; Earn 5 more merit badges (so that you have 11 in all), including any 3 more from the Eagle. Did they count Emergency Prep and Lifesaving or Swimming, Hiking or Cycling merit badges as required??

From what I understand if you count Emergency Prep as a required merit badge you can not count Lifesaving as required but you it as part of the total. The same is true for Swimming, Hiking or Cycling. Did the Scoutmaster or the Board or Review count them twice???

a. First Aid

b. Citizenship in the Community

c. Citizenship in the Nation

d. Citizenship in the World

e. Communications

f. Personal Fitness

g. Emergency Preparedness OR Lifesaving

h. Environmental Science

i. Personal Management

j. Swimming OR Hiking OR Cycling

k. Camping, and

l. Family Life *

 

 

[AdvanceOn 10]

What amazes me about this whole incident is the snowball effect --

 

A number of you mention the blue cards -- until I took over advancement often the boys weren't even aware that they were supposed to keep their blue card portion. Now I stress this at every BOR and in any number of other settings.

 

We actually found tons of applicant blue cards in the troop building so here's another example of the adults failing the boys.

 

I agree that the troop has the primary responsibility, I just don't buy that council is a repository only until the Eagle application comes in. That makes no sense to me. If a council is using Scoutnet (which ours is) shouldn't it kick back odd reports just like Troopmaster?

 

[Bob White 20]

Actually btps at the Star to Life rank, as we are discussing with this young man, if he had Hiking, Cycling and Swimming he could count those as three Eagle required badges. It is not until after he receives Life and is working on Eagle that he can only count one as an Eagle required and the other two would be counted as electives.

 

Hope that clarifies things. (and of course I should mention the reference....the Advancement Committee Policies and Procedures manual)

 

Bob White

[AdvanceOn 10]

btps:

 

I haven't a clue how they screwed that up. It seems pretty clear to me. But, they did screw up and now this scout and I, as the current advancement coordinator are trying to clean up the mess.

[Bob White 20]

AdvanceOn,

ScoutNet is not the cure all everone hoped it would be. As I understand it here are the "quirks". ScoutNets membership data is not on a data base, it is on an Excel spreadsheet. If you have any knowledge of computers you can already see the problem. You can do sorts of the information but you are limited to 4 levels. In addition The whole nation is basically on one spread sheet so the sorts take awhile. National has very few servers so you end up waiting in line. Now if your council down loads the council info locally you still have the whole council on one spread sheet. In order to customize reports as you are asking for, someone in council would need to know how to export the council spreadsheet to Access as a comma deliniated file. Than after importing to Access they would need to create table relationships, build queries and run reports. There aren't that many councils I'd bet that have personnel knowledgable to do this.

 

That is why they are responsible to record and maintain. It is the job of the Troop to verify completion before they send in the Advancement report.

 

Bopb White(This message has been edited by Bob White)

[bt01 10]

Did the requirement change when this scout was going for life or eagle?? Or did any one check his book before they signed it?? I am not blaming the scout but some one should have caught this problem.

[mk9750 11]

Just to clarify my position:

It absolutely is the BOR who made this error. If someone must "learn from their mistake", it is the BOR and the advancement chairman (if he / she were still there). Does the boy have a responsiblity to have all requirements done before he requests a Scoutmaster conference and BOR? YES. But let's assume for a second he honestly thought he was finished (the conversation about the changing requirements is interesting: We have three boys who could have been tripped up at Eagle for MBs earned for Star that would not count as required for Eagle had I not been on top of working with them to make sure it didn't). If the BOR does nothing more than a cusory review, and promote him, it is the BOR's fault.

Lastly, I agree that it would be wise if councils did this check at every rank. But it's unrealistic to think they have the resources to do so. Until that happens, the responsiblity will remain with the Advancement Chairman and the BOR.

[AdvanceOn 10]

Jusst received my Scout's APPROVED Eagle packet in the mail today so it looks like we worked out all the bugs. This has definitely been an eye-opener for me.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions, feedback, and discussion. I really like having such a strong network of Scouters. It really has expanded my access to resources.

[eisely 13]

Sounds like a good outcome.

 

You mentioned a third scout in process about whom you were worried. Wouldn't it make sense to start checking his, yours, and council's records now before it gets out of hand?

[AdvanceOn 10]

Already working on it. but that doesn't mean I'm not nervous about the can of worms that will be opened at some point!