moosetracker

OldGray - I might be partial (in most cases) to my husband.. But, no I would not call him a jerk (in most cases).. Just a combination of a) The whole family is very BoyScout oriented B) Youth rebellion arguements on other issues, seeping into scouting and his making a bad.. bad.. judgement call.. Sometimes he gets so pigheaded he can't see that he may win a battle with his actions, but he is loosing the war. Know when to pick your battles, when to drop them, and when they are not part of the battle at all.. And scouting should be not part of the battle at all. Like I stated in most cases he is an excellent leader, excellent with the scouts. I think he would have made a fine teacher for almost any grade level. Since I am not talking to him about it, (not because I'm not talking to him, but I chose not to get involved this time) I really don't know what he communicated to the Quartermaster. I would find it hard to believe it was "Ha.. Ha.. lets pawn your work off on my son".. I would hope it was simply telling him if he moved the equipment from trailer to shed, he had fullfilled his duties as QM.. QM probably knew nothing about my sons tickets, he's been around long enough to know that is not all the QM's duties, but was not going to argue if he was getting out of the job easy.. (Even if he didn't know about the WB ticket items. I do think he would have known the poor inventory would have been then passed on to be the new QM's problem.) But if you have shirked your duties for the 6 months you had the position, I can't see him then saying "No.. Mr. ______ your wrong. I know I need to go through all the cook kits and tents and other equipment and figure out what went missing during the time I was not keeping good track of it."

Well Dad hasn't sucked it out yet, since 1st grade tiger, they just go head to head at times. His girlfriend is now joining the troop as an 18 yo ASM. We were encouraging them to switch troops (both father & I) only I thought the drag was on the need to complete the tickets.. He wavered with the idea, then stated "No, he didn't want to leave this troop." Then back & fourth, with the wavering.. Girlfriend took on MB counseling, but held off on troop registration to see where they wanted to go. But last committee meeting, they gave her a position in the troop, & she filled out registration. She will be like son, register as an ASM on paper, cause that's all they can be at 18, and taking on a committee position.. I would have thought it better to fly away. May have helped on other fronts of his rebellious stage for him to be independent at least in scouting.

oops.. Not Pinewood derby sleds (is there such a thing?) I meant Klondike derby sleds..

Son not jealous of Fathers favoritism of scout.. Father is like that with all other scouts & his son at all times though scouting.. Son must do better and be better and work 10 times harder then any other scout, and still son could do better. Normally he is very fair and patient with other scouts, teaches them skills but expects them to carry out their responsibilities. This is the first time I saw him cheat another scout of his POR just to force his son to do more than required, or win a battle with his son. Father knows he is harder on son. Son will say Father is a great scoutleader with all but him. Father will agree. This is definately inability to be neutral with your own child. With most parents either you are too easy or too hard.. We all know in this family it leans to the too hard. I think I was the wishy washy parent, trying to be neutral, I would be too easy at one time, and too hard at another, and rarely came up neutral. When ticket was written, the normal troop equipment was all in the trailer and not the shed. The QM's job is to inventory the troop equipment while passing it on to the next QM, then if they do their job correctly inventory at the end of their term should be easy, if they don't do their job, then inventory is difficult. That is the QM's job. The shed is really more utilized by the pack since the troop got the trailer. Shed is now just the dumping grounds, for the troop. The first time son cleaned the shed (before troop equipment was dumped in), the troop had not much left, lots trashed, old cookstoves & lanterns with white gas & such came home to be sold on ebay for funds for the troop. Old camping boxes came home to be burned. Things left were troop T-shirts, a few backpacks, cookkits and other gear donated for the purpose of being donated to scouts with financial needs (these are things the troop forgot were there), a box of rope, staves and the pinewood derby sleds.. the rest for the troop was just cleaning out the dumping grounds so the pack could get to and locate their stuff.. Then he went through the pack's items and organized that, throwing out only what could not be saved though the mouse infestation. The shed just isn't considered the equipment that the troop ever bothered with including in troop inventory. No one inventoried the troops trash. No where on the ticket was stated he would inventory the troops equipment. That was the QM's duty. Now that the troop equipment got thrown out of the trailer and into the shed, son is forced to inventory it, NOT because it is troop equipment, but because it is in the shed.. He still will not go canvasing the neighborhood for missing equipment. He is not doing inventory of the troops equipment.. That is not his ticket item, never was. His ticket is to organize and itemize that which is in the shed. The ticket is clearly written out as to what he was doing, because he did NOT want to include the trailer and it's items, or the missing troop items, because the QM wasn't doing his job. When he wrote out his ticket, that was his intent.. He thought the equipment was not being tracked right, and the problem should be rectified by the QM that was not doing his job. How else do the scouts learn responsibility? He wrote out the ticket, showed it to me to look over, and stated he wanted to make sure it did not include the items in the trailer, before he ever passed the ticket in. Obviously he never discussed the issue ahead of time with "Dear old Dad" and made sure Dad was not going to muck up his intent. If they had, son would have changed the ticket item for something completely different. I would post the ticket but I don't have access to it anymore.

Yeah, theres time's I'm proud of my son.. Other times I could wring his neck.. He is mature in some ways, but is delayed in others. We thought we lucked out with no rebellious years, he hit them at 18. We did want him to have friends, it was one of the reasons I wanted him in scouts. Troop would go camping & Dad & Leaders were always forcing him to leave the adults and return to his peers. He was always so serious, and just never could take a joke, or being silly.. At 5 years old, I said he was an 80 year old man in a 5 year old body. His dad & I would joke & laugh & tease not meanly, just as you do with family.. He just never understood it. Just as he became JASM and was Eagle scout, they wanted to start a Venture crew. I told them they better not force the under 21 YO's in it.. The lady starting it didn't see my problem. I said, "My son has wanted to be with the adults since forever, he is now with them and thrilled, Don't force him back with his peers.".. The SM just laughed and agreed, "Oh yeah, he has wanted to be with us for as long as I've known him. He will definatly not want to be in a crew.." And he definately did not. I guess a result of being an only child. His grandparents loved having him met their friends, there friends were amazed at how comfortably he talked and related with them (Seniors) whether he was 5 /10 or whatever. They would discuss and ask about him long after they met him. So he is sociable, just never with his own peers.. He is doing better working with young kids too. People think he is gifted as a teacher. Now that his peers are maturing, he is now doing fine with them too. And he is now understanding joking and teasing, started about the time he also went to his rebellious stage.

This is rare, and should be applauded. I have only met a few. One started at scoutmaster at 18, and he was now in his 50's and still SM.. Another was from our Troop, he did not stay as SM, but had about 20 years but was in scouting before that and after that, he was active still (yet somewhat not so involved.) I forget what his years were but they were awesome. Another has been in it for life too, I am unsure if he was ever SM though.. District, National, must be in his 80's but he is still so full of life and energy I could not keep up with him. Another from our troop was never SM, but was big in district.. Now he still remains on the Eagle board, but he should be retired only no one has a heart. In truth he shouldn't be driving anymore as he can't remember something from 5 minutes back. Kids don't relate to him too well either if he becomes their advisor for their Eagle project. Some of it is great, if the SM is able to grow and change with the times. If not, it may not be so good to stay as SM..

Eagle92 - sorry I did not answer this. Yes troop meetings are only when school is in session, not summer, vacation, even if school has a 1 day off on our meeting day, or School cancels over weather.. We do summer camp and an event for the other month. I believe they are going White water Rafting. But troop meets at summer camp, and will meet in parking lot the day of the other event. Son has been talking to Course director (Scoutmaster).. The guy just says he will contact advisor. He feels the advisor will eventually talk to him, so has not reassigned him. For some reason he is reluctant to do so, but knows the issue. At least he got the green light to start from the Course director.. It would have been better that the advisor started out absent, and had not emailed with implicent orders for him not to start until they discussed the tickets.. Son can and is finishing ticket regardless of what his father did. It is not like the shed blew up, or was set on fire. It has just become twice the job. It was just underhanded of him is all. Another thing that gets me was when his father took woodbadge one of his tickets was to put the selves in the "then" new trailer, and take the equipment out of the shed to put in trailer.. He never inventoried the equipment, nor cleaned and straightened, tossed inventoried what remained in the shed.. WHY??? Cause it was not on his ticket!!!

baccus - I can't really blame the QM, except that he didn't do his job for the full 6 months, but if you have an adult leader telling you this is what needs to get done and you are done, rather then telling you your job entails the inventory of the equipment, then you may or may not know from the past QM's that there is more to it. But, if you have not been a scout intent on doing a good job, you will follow orders and do what you are told is needed.. I am unsure if he even knew my son would now get the task of inventory.. My husband knew, he may or may not have. Eagle92 - I still side with my son.. If was the task of another adult leader maybe. Where doing the trailer would have been doing a young scouts position assignment. Then he was right to not include it in his ticket. Should he have helped? Maybe, but now you are talking about father and teenage son family battle mixing up with scouting. This became a father/son war. Both got stubborn, Father got his way by being nasty even if it cost a young scout learning how to do his job right. Basementdweller - Son has been weird from the get-go.. At 10 he wanted to hang with the adults.. He never understood his peers. He always wanted to be an adult. He got Eagle just a bit before 16 and wanted to be JASM.. Scoutmaster made him wait for 16, but then he never looked back at being with the kids anymore, he has been welcoming them as they matured to adulthood. At 16 he wanted to take all the Adult training. He was upset that they would not let him until 18.. He went on-line and took what he could at 16.. HE wanted to go to Woodbadge.. We figured even if he didn't complete his tickets & get his badge, the leadership skills were good for college. He doesn't want to be an ASM like the other Scouts of 18, he got the position of Outdoor coordinator, went to all the committee meetings and got them to let him have committee voting rights. He went to the Eagle Board monthly as they welcomed visitors.. After month after month they put him officially on the Board, paperwork and all. He is now looking for another District position, that has more responsibilty then going to the EBOR monthly.. Actually I mis-spoke he was 18 when he took Woodbadge, he is now 19.

I have been fine with most the comments, just the "Mom" is the helecopter & nothing about "Dad's" interference got to me. At the beginning of the whole thing, son did tell Dad that it was just shed, Firmly.. Then Dad dragged me into arguement (thinking I would side with him. Upset I did not..) As far as son saw his ticket when he created it, the inventory of all the troop equipment was the Quartermaster duty.. Had been for years, yet no one ever did the Shed.. So his ticket was not about taking the responsibility away from the Quartermaster. His ticket was about overseeing something that had been neglected for years. When I was dragged into the arguement I chose to side with what my son saw as his ticket item, and what he was responsible for.. I thought we should bud out and what my son saw as his ticket item is what I felt was accurate, because it was his ticket period.. So leave him alone to do what he wanted to do.. I think son would have helped with the trailer had Dad not been forcing it on him as "his duty" but asked him to help, just to help.. But, the arguement got so bad, between them, son wasn't going near the project. Son first chose not to tell me what Dad had done, then it slipped out and I was furious that, that was not his job. Now son says to me.. "I said I would inventory the shed. Now that this is in there I have no choice but to do it. It is now part of my ticket.." I stopped arguing he was right. That does not mean I am not mad at hubby for what he did. As far as I am concerned what son sees as his ticket is what is correct. End of story. Son has a problem with his Woodbadge Guidence guy. Right after Woodbadge the guy emailed him once to say not to start anything until he went over the tickets with him. Then my son tried & tried & tried to contact him and nothing for 6 months.. Getting worried about starting his tickets he talked to the guy who headed the course. He was told by him to start the tickets, that he would get ahold of the guy and have him start contacting Son.. So he is doing the tickets, he has talked to the Course director a few more times about no word from Guidence guy. But still no contact with Guidence guy.. Quartermaster & my hubby did their thing like a week before jobs were reassigned. Hubby backed up Quartermaster on his "excellent" job.. No way for son to now get QM rear in gear. It's not his job, and my husband has stated he did his job. Girlfriend has been at shed helping son. He asked me to help one day, I helped but really spent most the day going out for supplies while he worked the shed. He probably should have, could have gotten the rest of the troop to help, but I don't think he knew until Thursday, the mess my husband left him. Now the troop is out for the summer. So he is stuck doing it without their help. Also he & Girlfriend did most of it Thurs. all that is left is inventoring the tents.

"Mom" got involved, because "Dad" got involved.. "Why is Dad involved?" Why is it ok for "Dad" to increase the requirements, but not ok for Mom to say that it is not "Dad's" ticket and he should stay out of it.. Why is Mom the helecopter parent to tell Father to bud out..? He is over 18. Except for the original conversation, that turned into family about what this ticket was about, (Which it was not a ticket to inventory the Equipment, It was a ticket to clean the shed, disinfect that which still could be used from the mouse turds, throw out what could not be saved, and determine & inventory what was boyscout & what was cubscout.)... My husband saw this as All Inventory All equipment, desertrat saw the same thing.. So maybe it is a guy thing to see something and generalize it to include more. While women see something for what it is.. Mom is staying out right now.. I have not said a word to my husband about it. Although he knows I am not happy with him.. I am letting son handle it. I would rather beat him over the head, and tell him to get his butt to the shed and do his own work, not pawn it off on his son. I knew he put the stuff in the shed, but I thought not without inventoring the tents, and throwing the trash away.

My son took woodbadge last October, one of his tickets was to clean out & inventory the scout shed that belongs to both cubscout & boyscout, and because of it things got dumped in it, units forgot what belonged to who, and then things just sat.. Plus we recently had mice infestation. His Father (my husband).. Decided to work with the the scout in the troop who had the position of Troop Quarter master and hadn't done a thing with it, and whose position was coming to a close.. In order to get credit for the job he had to do something, so my husband was going to work with him on the Troop trailer (this alot of the troop equipment in it.) He decided this was good because they would be helping my son with his ticket. My son said his ticket did not include the troop trailer only the shed. My husband said that was a half-assed ticket, and he had to do the trailer.. I sided with my son. I felt a woodbadge ticket is like a merit badge requirement. You can't add to the meritbadge requirements, my husband shouldn't be adding to his sons woodbadge ticket. My husband got upset I sided with my son. My son spent a day at the shed. Cleaning it, throwing away a ton of stuff, mice infested, or old & broken, and the shed looked good, but he had not inventoried it yet. My husband and the quartermaster spent about 4 hours on the trailer. He came home and said they decided to take everything out of the trailer and put it in the shed. Then the troop can take from the shed what was needed. My son went back to inventory and found a mess.. the tents from the trailer were not taken from the trailer & dumped in the shed with no checking for missing, the first aid kits from the trailer just dumped without checking... Basically he had to start over and dump all the unusable stuff that my husband & the Quartermaster dumped onto him.. He did so without complaint, except last night he said to me all he had left to do was inventory the tents. Knowing those were from the trailer I said, "your father & so-and-so did that".. He told me no they just moved them. I disputed that wasn't his job.. His only answer was he had not gotten to the inventory, and to finish his job, he had no choice but to do the trailer. This morning my husband was gloating that our son had to spend a day throwing away a ton of stuff from the shed. Since I knew my son had already thrown away and organized the shed to be only good stuff. The new "junk" he had to toss out had to have come from the trailer.. I am pissed. But, I know my son wants to handle it himself.. Besides my son, what responsibility did my husband teach the quartermaster who wasn't doing his job? "Let's just off load this job on someone else".. So am I right to be angry? Or, am I being the over-protective mother who is not letting her son grow up?

Hmmm.. a definition of sherminator's modernization & SR540Beaver's ?? Beaver - maybe if your new fangled tent had to be plugged in, sherminator would be against it, but I don't think he has a problem with the lighter poles and lighter dryer materials of tents, or the new material that replaces the need for wool blankets or what-not. I think he is probably refering more to the comments of people bringing flat screen TV, and needing to plug anything in unless it is for medical reasons.. Do those people ever look up to see the trees, or take their headsets off to hear the birds? Or move out of their campsites to walk down the path and take a swim in the lake? I have not seen the plug in's around our boyscout camps that others have mentioned. Though our troop does do one winter camping that allows them the items, but that is the one & only campout. Otherwise our troop outlaws them. If found the SM will take them, to be returned to your parents when you are picked up. I have seen it with family camping, though.. We still go with tents, while others bring in Bus size campers with wide screen TV's and inside kitchens & livingrooms, Sometimes their generator noise disturbs our camping, Otherwise you rarely see them poke their nose out. I wonder the same thing, when faced with it there to.. We work hard to find campgrounds that will not sandwich us between two huge "modern conviences"...

Congradulations! You will have fun. Remember the camera, and REMEMBER TO USE IT!

Yep, pretty much all you said is all that we did. It is just from head down the answer was to ignore our complaint.. My husband was real bad about it too.. There was the Council Program director, and for years any time my husband saw him he would talk real nice for a while to him, then zing... "My son is still waiting for his appology.." Then 6 months later.. "How are you.. blah, blah.. Yep, have you guys discussed giving my son an appology yet?" For some reason the guy never ran from my husband until he said something about the apology, then the guy had to run. My husband did this until we got a new Program director. Yes, I know the broken leg would be insane, but so was what they did. (Ok, maybe the broken leg is a little more insane.) I also was upset for those boys who went to "Trail to Eagle" who were close to 18, and really needed this for a last minute push to the finish line. I hope those boys were able to go home and round up some merit badge counsilors and finish up on time. Their whole treatment of those boys all week long was insane, they couldn't eat in the mess hall, it was cold cereal, granola bars and cold sandwiches for meals, they were not told anything up front but herded from place to place. As the morale got worse, they would scream at the boys all day long. They were treated as if they were in an army boot camp and had to be broken. I was shocked when my son decided in order to get over such a bad ordeal the answer was to retake Trail to Eagle the next year at a different camp.

Pinkflame - For the most part I do agree with you. I have taken on many positions due to the need for it to get done. But, with your out-of-Council camp, you had the luck that they welcomed your help.. With Basementdweller, he did try to step up and offer a Pinewood derby because his district didn't offer one. The results was that the district put out the word to the units that it was not sanctioned by them and they should not attend. How would you have felt if you offered to be the camp doctor & FA MB, and the camp went off and told everyone not to go to you because the camp did not authorize you to be camp DR, or teach the MB..? Also with Trail to Eagle it is designed to be Provisional, so their are no adults from the troop looking out that the boys have a good program. What would you have done if you sent your son to a week of camp, and came back to pick him up and found out he had broken his leg on the 1st day, and since there was no camp Dr.. they never got the leg treated, just had him sit in his tent all weekend long. You had a great opportunity to roll up your sleeves and help out. Sometimes circumstances prevent it.

,What resqman said.. With the addition that alot of times it is going to be in YOUR attitude when you present it as to if you scare off potentials or not. At this point in time, I would bet given the same canadate if it were possible if you discussed training with them you would scare them off, yet resqman would not.. It might be possible that reqman if he were in the neighborhood, could talk to the guy you scared off last night and calm him down and get him to be excited about joining again. Forget National mandates.. YOU should want trained leaders in you unit. YOU should want to provide your boys with the best program available. YOU should want to make sure that you & your team are following all the safty measures so that there are no serious accidents or incidents. YOU should make them want to go for training so that they can not just be a body in a uniform, but become a knowledgable and excellent leader. The more they know, the easier their job will be as ASM / SM during the troop meetings and at those weekend events. Yet if you present training to people as a ridiculous and senseless nuisance that is unneccessary and useless and forced upon you for no good reason. That is exactly how they will take it.

You might have a closer knit district group. Around here, you may have a smuck for an Advancement Chair, or great guy.. But one group doesn't get involved in the other group or know whether you paid FOS or not.. And then the the Advancement Chair isn't the only one on the Eagle Board, I guess the board could be made up of others that are doing other district job, but with ours these guys just do the board and don't get involved in anything else with the district.. So these guys really could care less. They are just people who enjoy getting to see the end product of those well polished Scouts. But each council is different. If yours is totally inter-bred, you may have reason for your fears, but that would just be another example of having a corrupt district & council.

They must be having the person who issues the Tour permit checking these council mandated trainings out. If & when the troop does a tour permit requiring someone has it. Hazardous weather is any tour permit, the others depend on the outing. BSA's software wouldn't be able to keep up with it. And since most of those things only requires one person listed on a Tour permit has it, it could be anyone from SM to some committee member who goes on outings. My husband is Advancement Coordinator so a committee member, but he and my sone are the only ones that have bothered to take this training. My husband feels obligated to go on every outing. My son who is Outdoor Coordinator, rarely is free to go on the outings.. He is now trying to get others to get some of this training.

Since my son was the one with the Eagle Trail which turned into a disaster.. Being that it was not a unit that went, but more provisional with every boy coming from different units, I am unsure what else other parents did. But this I do know. BAD word of mouth got out.. The Council was cocky enough to try to promote the next year of running Eagle Trail as last year, at our roundtabel.. Because it the spokesperson was a lad no more then 18 who was doing the promotion, everyone had the presence of mind not to kill the messager.. But, the room got that sickly quiet.. The Scout knew something was wrong, looked around stopped short on Trail-To-Eagle, and went on to a different topic. Before Summer Camp started it was made known Trail-To-Eagle would not be offered that year, nor has it returned since. Some of the boys during the camp week protested by sneaking out of camp and setting a local fire.. Others were drummed out for stealling (both dumb ways of protesting. They did themselves worse damage. But definately showed the organizers did not have as tight of a control as they wanted to.) Some around Wed. remembered some Dr appt or something, had their parents pick them up, and never returned. My son held off on completeing MB's on purpose. He so wanted a fantastic Trail to Eagle, he went to a different camp the next year to retake it again and had a great time. I think the statement he was not "Eagle Material" made him feel he had something to prove. Also every year my son went with the troop 1 week and provisional a second week.( We told him we would pay for one week, if he wanted a second, he could earn it through popcorn sales, and he did.) Anyway, from that point on, he never took provisional with our Councils camps again. He did not trust them without his troop for support. So I don't know if other families got their money back one way or the other. But, the message was sent. Outside of boyscouts if I paid for professional painter to paint my house blue, and I return to find it painted, but in pink.. I would not pay those painters regardless of if the house was well painted or not. That was not what I contracted for. My son may have attended camp, for a week. But it was not what he signed up for. In fact with a medical condition that was taking time to diagnose, that resembled epileptic seizures sometimes triggering 10 - 25 times a day. The quiet studious camp that we signed him up for was fine. But under Dr. orders he was not to do anything strenious.. He came to camp with the Med form stateing his condition, and a scout who was also going to take the course, but also personally watch out for him. So they were not blind to his condition. Yet, he was ridiculed for refusing to go to the heights on the COPE course, and could have been injured in many of the other activities they were "forced" into doing. Luckily for him, it was an unusually quiet week from attacks. Found he has dystonia, but it is now well contained with medicine, but found out what it is is that he looses his entire muscle coordination (like muscular dystrophy, which it is a cousin of) with change of movement, sitting to standing, standing to walking, walking to running.. etc. (Not everytime he changed motion, but that was the trigger for it.) Imagine being up high on a tightrope at the COPE course, and loosing all control of your muscles! Where were their brains?

Lisabob, I don't think Basementdweller is looking at holding back FOS due to the district, (although I think he had a few stories about them, like not organizing a Pinewood derby and tripping up anyone outside the district level volunteers who attempted to do so for the district.) But I don't think the district is the main problem. Maybe lack of bringing in FOS funds hurts the DE performance ratings, but at least in my district when they solicited for FOS they always stated the Funds mainly went to the camps, and then some to the Council staff. Therefore withholding FOS to send the Council a message about their own performance, and their lack of using the money to improve the conditions of the camps, seems appropriate. When I sent in only $1.00 to repay the fee of the two boys summer camp. It seemed appropriate since the money mainly went to the camps funding. The little to the council also approriate, since all they needed to do was apologize. I don't know if they feared it opened door to being sued or what. But the whole thing would have been dropped with an appology to my son.. Seemed a simple request to me. So their loss of funds was also appropriate. At the time we started this though, our DE was wonderful. I had no complaints against him at all. If the FOS went to him and our district, that probably would not have been where I would have recouped the funds.

My husband and I do that, but we are going to have to do a better job at district. Currently we Jan - Feb of the next year, whip out last years calendar.. then do the itemiziation.. Each Thursday the troop meeting, Once a mth on a certain wed the committee.. Add in the once a mth Eagle board, All those have set milage The hardest was figuring out the Events attended, and the milage for those. Now we have round Tables, district committee, bi-mthly Council planning meeting.. Come the Fall we will start visiting units. I will also have the training events for milage. It is going to get hard to itemize from looking at last years troop calendar. I did do up to mid April this year, I need to revisit it & bring it up to date again.

Ooops.. Meant to say "Since then our FOS has been alot less"..

We spent 5 years only paying $1.00 to FOS. I figured not contributing didn't send a message. Handing them $1.00 sent a message loud and clear. My son signed up for trail to Eagle, we also paid for another boy to attend because my son was having health issues, (what we thought at the time to be epiletic but turned out to be dystonia). To make along story short, they pretended they would run it like other years.. Made reassuring noises to parents when we arrived at camp with our kids. Then when the parents left, they yelled surprise to the kids, did not run per-say a Trail to Eagle, (fun electives, hiking, cope course.. All the things my son in with his health issues shouldn't have been doing.) Refused to let the boys who were upset call home. When my son stood up to them demanding he get the program he came for, they told him he was not "Eagle material" to question their authority etc.. etc.. Well when we picked him up, got the full story, no blue cards signed off, even lost the paper work he did for prerequisits of the MB's he had signed up for (Yes, to keep the surprise they let them choose their MB's only to not offer them).. Needless to say we were not happy.. We demanded they appologize to our son. They could applogize or return the money for the two boys we paid to attend. They chose to do neither. So we took it back with FOS money we would have normally donated.. Until entirely paid back we gave a $1.00 donation with a message of "Normally you would be receiving $xx.xx from us as in past years but since you need to pay us back for not fullfilling your commitement to provide the Trial to Eagle program that we paid you for. We are deducting it from your FOS payment." Since then our FOS has not been alot less.

Thanks JHankins .. I'm meeting Monday night with the Council Training Chair at our Round table. I will have some solid items to ask for. I also have asked the trainer who was kindof doing this info to sit with us. If he does, I hope to pull out of him some info on typical costs for our training events, (and hopefully plug him to get me the past Records of who took training. I ask so many times I feel like a nag over the issue.) You put in THAT many hours for training? You must definately by running a very vigourous Supplemental training program. Currently ours is just the Basic courses, but I want to do some Supplemental training (not so much I log those type of hours per month though!!!).. What training is with a Volcano? That sounds quite interesting.

Bando - I don't know if it is the same with a discontinued MB, but with MB's that change, the scout part way through the MB can elect to go with the new requirements or the old ones.. If your Bugler MB's have started it, it is worth the question of if those who have started it will have the opportunity to complete it.. If that is the case, those you are working with can be the last to get the MB.. (If so though I would pick up the MB patches before the MB is discontinued.. Maybe someone in this forum knows the answer. That is great you have a troop active in that. We tried to offer the position, but it became a position the boy held and got away with doing nothing in, we might have gotten one force (*bad*) bugling attempt. Our troop discontinued the position for that reason.