Eagle1993

The defunding and loss of vocational education in high school and trade schools is a shame. If there is one area I think Boys have been short changed it is in the loss of voc ed. Yes, college is great for some but not all. If your talent and interest is in the trades you can live a great and successful life. Unfortunately too many schools have dropped this and seem to think any college is better than other path. I’m not a huge fan of online schools for most students. Most of the people I hire or work with use very little specific knowledge they acquired in college. What they have to do is creative problem solving in complex teams. I have a hard time seeing online universities providing that skill development. There may be some that are starting to find a way... I just haven’t seen it yet.

Scout leaders (Troop and Pack) are paid professionals. I was shocked by that one and heard it more than once.

By BSA banning these youth they were not staying out of the situation. They were telling the youth that they are wrong or immoral or some combination of the two. Sorrry, this is not a situation any youth organization is ever on the sideline. I do agree it is complex but ignoring it by banning youth did send a simple message to a complex issue and it wasn’t staying out of it. As far as how to work with the youth... ask the parents. Youth leaders are faced with a variety of complexities youth face... this is just another one.

In my kids school there is 1 transgender youth ... out of 600 students. Their parents fought it for about 4 years (the child wanted to be a boy starting at 5). The child missed classes, was in therapy, had limited friends, etc. Finally after discussions with doctors the parents gave up the fight and now use boy pronouns and name with their son. He attends classes, has friends, and has a much improved life outlook. I don’t think a 5 year old thought it was “cool” to be LGBTQ. What defines gender? Some say XX or XY. Guess what, there are people with male genitalia while having XX chromosomes. There are people with female genetalia with XY. There are some youth born (Dominican Republic) that appear to be female but male genetalia appear when they hit puberty as there different hormones that lead to development between fetus and adolescents. And these are just the physiological gender issues. I agree that science is in its infancy here but to say a scout leader or organization is the authority in this matter is crap and they should not be making calls on this. If the parents and youth decide they identify with a specific gender then scouts should accept that. I would actually find it more damaging to my son to have youth in his unit that believe LGBTQs are immoral and bad than being around a LGBTQ youth; however, I wouldn’t support kicking out anti LGBTQ scouts (as long as they don’t violate G2SS/YPT) just as I didn’t and wouldn’t support banning LGBTQ youth (with the same caveat).

I actually don’t think BSA has to take any immediate action. At the Cub Scout level, boy and girl dens can have the same leaders and meet at the same time and place. At the Scout level Boy and Girl Troops just have to have different SMs, otherwise they can meet together, have same Troop number, go on outings together. Perhaps the biggest issue faced is different SPLs and Patrols, but the Troops that want those coed will probably do it regardless of what Nationals says. I put any changes along these lines at 4-5 years out. There is already a ton of flexibility given for the Troops and Packs that want to act fully coed.

I believe in evolution and any fish dumb enough to be caught by me or my Scouts were living on borrowed time anyway. We’re simply helping to improve the gene pool and make fish great again. Your welcome PETA.

It’s amazing you have this much access and it sounds like you are taking advantage of the opportunity! Hope you are emphasizing how much fun Cub Scouts is... some boy talks can get boring if not done well. Unfortunately my school district banned the scouts years ago (we can’t even have a flyer advertising scout night in the school), so it’s great to hear schools that give this much access. Keep up the good work.

25,700 girls in Cub Scouts as of today. That is an increase of nearly 7,000 girls over the last 2 weeks.

17 years old?!? My father has seen this regarding EBORs and has had a mom state that their son is shy which is why the mom needs to take the lead in all communications. My father’s response is that your son earned communication MB (required for Eagle) and should therefore be able to communicate directly. What type of leaders are we producing if everything needs to go through mom or dad?

Girl Scouts do seem to have a minimum number of leaders to youth ratio that actually exceed Boy Scouts. Correct, if she wants to stick around she has to register. BSA you can stick around and even stay overnight with youth without registering... up to 72 hours. While some are complaining, this is still much more loose than many other youth organizations. I would expect that this will tighten further as litigation and local laws continue to pass to hold youth organizations liable for protecting youth from adults.

To be clear, if my wife wants to volunteer for GSUSA Troop at even 1 event lasting 1-2 hours she has to pay $25 and register as an adult.

I think this explains why some of the parents were shocked as they had youth in GSUSA or a YMCA camp... both require parents to register/go through background checks.

I’ll talk to two experiences I have had with GSUSA. My daughters Troop is massive 40 Scouts in 1st grade. They meet monthly with 1 or 2 activities a year outside those meetings. The meetings are right after school and primary involve crafts or cookie sales. She found the meetings to be ok. She did love the GSUSA summer camps ... they exceeded the quality of the BSA summer camps. The fourth grade girls that disbanded. The leaders were burnt out and overall they felt the program was boring. During our JSN we did water rockets with the kids. One of the girls shouted out to a quiet room “this is SOOO much more fun than Girl Scouts”. I know that isn’t fair but it was based on her own experience. I am also aware of an area GSUSA Troop that went to Europe and camped in the Alps. Based on my limited experience and have seen...when the Troop is good, it is really good, but when it is bad it dies. I’m not sure which direction my daughter’s Troop is headed.

We added a lot of boys the last 2 years and have around 25% of all boys in the school in our Pack. We are adding a few more boys but I expect their number (Tiger and above) will be flat to last year. Last year we had 8 Lions at JSN but only 4 this year (no girls). Parents of the four were discussing how to get more to join. Overall, I think we will be flat with boys (pending Lions) and seeing growth from the girls. As you said, nothing official until recharter and we have a fairly decent size group of minimally engaged scouts... so I could see some of them dropping.

I’m pretty sure they would as long as they don’t have to actually provide actual leadership. They are surprised BSA would allow parents to spend the night who wouldn’t agree to a CBC.

We have a similar issue with our Tiger den. The Lion leader stepped down and we have struggled to find other leaders. As a committee we went name by name through the den and identified a few possible candidates... try all declined due to other commitments. I found 1 leader who is doctor and is responsible for a pediatric department at a major hospital (so he is busy). I’m continuing to push to find others to help but so far no luck. Now, my daughter is in this den (the only leader is the parent of another girl) so I won’t let it collapse. My wife has taken YPT and has reluctantly “volunteered” to be our other leader. We will have the boy and girl dens meet together (otherwise the boy den has no leader and would collapse)... So, we are barely set. I would recommend having a meeting with the parents and explain the need for two leaders to be identified within the Den. Ask them to think of non parent options (aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends) who may be interested. In the end, if you still see lack of two leaders someone else from the Pack would have to help out or you let the Den collapse.

When I talked with new parents of our Pack last night they were surprised that the BSA allowed parents to stay overnight (even 1 night) with youth without registering as a leader. Society’s acceptance of organizations who fail to protect youth is pretty low... especially from sexual predators. I wouldn’t be surprised if BSA requires background checks of every parent spending even one night in the future.

To be clear, the fourth grade GSUSA Troop at our school fell apart... which is why we see so many from that grade in our Pack.

Just had our Join Scouts Night. Looks like we will be adding 7 - 10 more girls to our pack for a total of 17 - 20 out of roughly 90. It varies greatly by age with 0 5th graders but 9 4th graders. The GSUSA Troop at that grade fell apart and many of them joined Cub Scouts. Most of the girls joining do not have brothers in the Pack. Roughly 50% of the new Scouts joining our pack are girls and our total Pack size will be at its highest it’s been in 10+ years.

@gblotter If that is the case I’m out. I don’t need a club to hang out with other families. Cub scouts is somewhat like that but the only reason I’m sticking with that is that I know what comes with Boy Scouts. If they make Boy Scouts Webelos 3 I have no interest.

I definitely agree there is less pushback or concerns regarding girls in Cub Scouts vs Boy Scout Troops. 20% is probably a fair estimate as UK has 25% girls. As far as offsetting LDS loss it depends on how many LDS scouts stay. It will be interesting as the impact will vary greatly by council. It is still early for Troops. In my council only a few packs were early adopters but now many more are ramping up coed packs. I’m slowly starting to hear of Troops considering linked Troops, especially those who know they will have possible female AOLs crossing over. I saw one SM who was vary anti BSA4G, even yelling about it during a District Meeting. He is now working on creating a linked Troop where he will be ASM. He was against it but now that it is official wants to see it run well. I expect that story will not be uncommon. In general, I don’t expect a surge of girls in Scouts BSA until the Cub Scouts start moving in over the next 5 years.

I think the rat race which was reserved for adults entering the workforce had moved down to infants. Parents think.... for little Johnny to be CEO of Twitter or President of the USA he must attend Yale or Harvard. In order to attend Yale or Harvard he must never get in trouble, go to a “great” high school and get perfect ACTs. He also needs good extracurricular activities.... blah, blah. It goes all the way to ensuring they fetus listens to Beethoven in the womb. I think too many parents today feel like any failure during youth is a life sentence. Many parents do not see a need for little Johnny to play outdoors unless it helps him on his track to be President. Advancement helps communicate a value to those parents. This is definitely not everyone and I do see a growing backlash where building resilience, free play and other terms are being emphasized. We may have seen peak helicopter.... or perhaps the helicopters will simply have a new metric to track. I can only imagine.... “Johnny, you must complete your 30 mins of assigned free play before you practice piano.”

I don’t think he is correct. We should learn soon from the girl’s Scouts BSA book. I can tell you they updated the Webelos book to add girls and they still require them to teach the Patrol method under Scouting Adventure (to earn AOL) ... even to girls.

A bit more info. July finished with 10,000 girls. Cub Scouts now has 19,000 registered girls at the end of August.

Update on fall recruiting...note that this is from Nationals and is consistent with what I have seen so far in my unit and District. I think it will be interesting to see the September numbers. BSA has seen a 16% increase in new Cub Scouts in August over August of 2018. They also indicate that many councils report the vast majority of Packs are family Packs welcoming girls.