Special dens

[mbscoutmom]

I don't understand the emotional reaction to the idea of special dens. I hope the other parents in our pack won't feel this way. I realize now that most of you don't have the same sort of situation we do. Aren't most packs chartered by public schools? So the situation we have, with a large Catholic Church as the chartered organization, is unusual.

 

Our pack used to consist mostly of boys from the parish school, but in recent years, we've been reminded that we are chartered by the Church, not the school, and we need to invite all the boys in the Church. Also, the school has shrunk in size recently, resulting in very small dens in our pack.

 

If your pack was chartered by a large public school, and you had a lot of Tigers, would you deliberately mix up the boys between the dens, or would you let them join dens with boys they know from school? It seems to me that if you put boys in dens with people they don't know, and whose parents don't know each other, it's going to make it harder to retain scouts. That's what's happened a lot since we've been inviting more public and home-schooled kids to join our pack. They dropped out, and I think it's because they felt out of place in their den. Wouldn't it be better to group boys in dens who have something in common, and especially whose parents already know each other?

[Vicki]

mbscoutmom, I appreciate the fact that you're willing to stick around and listen to others' opinions on this topic. I think what you're saying is that the homeschoolers' ability to keep their flexibility is critical to their willingness to participate in Scouting activities. Since that's one of the reasons to homeschool in the first place, I can understand that logic. But it also bothers me that this will lead to the exclusion of two scouts just because they aren't homeschooled. Reverse prejudice, if you will. Tough spot to be in - I guess I hope that you get a lot more interest from school-aged kids. Being able to recruit in the Catholic school should help. The separate den for Spanish-speakers is, I think, a different issue and one that I'll leave alone.

 

But I will say - being chartered by a church is not at all unusual. Our troop and pack have been chartered to a church for 50 years. You probably haven't been following the court cases that have resulted in publicly-funded institutions being unable to charter Scout packs and troops. You might want to search around in the threads on this board and read up if you're interested. I'll warn you in advance, though, you might end up with more reading material and opinions than you want:

[mbscoutmom]

Vicki, I never said we planned to exclude any boys! We want to gain more boys and parents and not lose anyone, and I'm just trying to figure out the best way to accomplish that.

[Vicki]

mb, I said "But it also bothers me that this will lead to the exclusion of two scouts". Not judging anybody, I'm absolutely certain from your e-mails that you're not planning to exclude anybody. As I said, you're in a tough spot. But the law of unintended consequences in this situation seems to indicate that if you do things during the day when the non-homeschooled scouts can't come, they will, by definition, be excluded. If the homeschooled parents can't give up some of their flexibility in order to do things in the late afternoon, evenings, or weekends, then they will be excluded. Unless you can get enough scouts for two dens.

 

Like I said, tough spot.

 

Vicki

[Cubmaster Bill]

We experienced the same drop out issue with Spanish Speaking scouts last year, 15 of 17 new Hispanic scouts dropped out. This year if we recruit a large number again I am going to heavily recruit among the bi-lingual parents to be den leaders or assistant den leaders with an English only leader. This way both languages can be spoken when needed. I don't want to split a den along those lines.

 

Our town has a homeschool pack but it is very small. We have invited them to join us for larger events such as the various derbies that they may not be able to do on their own. Not much response. I know a couple of the mothers in that pack and find them to be (in my opinion) way overprotective. I think our rowdy loud Scouts scare them!!!

 

Just my .01 cents worth!

 

Bill

[mbscoutmom]

We have quite a few bilingual leaders in our pack. I'm one of the few who are NOT biligual, so I don't really think that's the problem with retaining hispanic scouts. The problems they expressed were that work schedules and lack of transportation kept them from the meetings. We could have worked out transportation if they had asked, though, so I think there are other problems that they're not telling us. One may be that they didn't understand how much of a committment they were making. Another may be that, because they were put into dens that were already established, they felt out of place. I think that rapport among the kids and parents in a den and pack is crucial to retaining them.