Girls in Cub Scouts - Actions taken to date

[KYScouter]

@@KYScouter, (welcome to the forums,btw) are you really expecting that level of demand?

 

We are at 46 boys and we require the parents to stay with their boys.  With the various younger siblings that also end up staying, we're really close to the max number of people we can have, so even 4-5 would likely push us over the occupancy rating,  We already cross our fingers and hope the fire marshal doesn't show up for Pinewood or a couple of our other events where we have grandparents, uncles, etc. 

 

That said, in our rural area where the girl scout unit is mostly about doilies and cookies, I fully expect we would have at least 20-25 who would join today if we let them.  We are also trying to get a boy scout troop restarted, since we have none in the county.  Our AOL boys who finished last year only had the option of going out of county to join a troop, and to my knowledge, none of them did, so we're making a push to find volunteers to form a troop.  Most likely our volunteers will be our current AOL parents, but they have younger boys in the cubs and have already said they would prefer to meet on the same night as the cubs.

 

As I mentioned, at the Cub level I see no problems, honestly, with letting the girls in.  The main issue is just space, and honestly like it always is with our current pack, volunteers.  We've had good luck with going to the dens and saying that if no one steps up to be den leader, we won't be able to do it.  Since we already have two of our 6 dens led by moms, I expect the same method would work with girl dens. 

 

Oh well, I guess this will be a problem for down the road.  My immediate concerns are re-charter and trying to recruit another member of the pack committee.... maybe even one who wants to be the chair and take over one of my hats!  lol  I'm also the COR, so between unit, district and council duties, I would really like to turn the planning and budget duties for the pack over to someone else.

[RememberSchiff]

 So if one of them stayed boy only, I would take girls.

 

In my experience, agreements among units about who will "take" what groups of incoming scouts only causes headaches. There are always exceptions and surprises with the membership.

 

So in talking to the other two packs, you might say "Our pack leadership has decided to accept girls, if you do not, please direct them to our pack."

 

My $0.02

[Snow Owl]

Here's the problem that I see, as I'm not opposed to letting girls into Cub Scout, it's a problem of logistics.  Our CO is a civic club and we meet in their building.  We have 45 boys and we are bursting at the seams of what our building can accommodate. So, where do we put the girls who join?  We physically don't have the space to add more kids.  Okay, so we're a civic club, if we don't admit girls, we're going to get sued into oblivion.  I guess I have two  choices, find another local CO for a girls pack or recommend to my club that we no longer sponsor scouts period.  This, on top of national "kindly" deciding to effectively steal 1/4 of my pack budget with their fee increase after recruitment has led to this whole thing being more stressful than I care to think about right now.  I'm not at burn out yet, but I can see it from here.

 I don't see the getting sued into oblivion as being an issue.  I think all of our packs will have growing pains, I think one way to approach it is to require a much higher level of adult leadership.  As in if you want your son or daughter to be a cub we need you to get trained and register as a leader. 

[Eagle1993]

In my experience, agreements among units about who will "take" what groups of incoming scouts only causes headaches. There are always exceptions and surprises with the membership.

 

So in talking to the other two packs, you might say "Our pack leadership has decided to accept girls, if you do not, please direct them to our pack."

 

My $0.02

We have fairly clear alignment in my town's 4 packs. Two are tied to churches and the other two are linked to the two public schools. I think my pack is the only one that did Lions but other than that we have the same admission policy. I do think the addition of girls could change the equation a bit and require us to interact a bit more. I like the idea is simply informing the other packs of the policy change. What are your thoughts about recruiting? Should my pack go in and directly recruit girls from the other school and churches if their packs don't offer a program?

[swilliams]

I had a conversation with another pack in our town and they are thinking about staying boys only. Both of our packs are closely tied to two separate public grade schools in our town. One option we just started considering was keeping one of our packs (theirs) as boys only and the other as coed. Then, any family that would want a boys only pack could go to theirs. Any girl in their grade school could join our pack. That way, we may have critical mass to actually implement some girls only dens. Not sure if this is how we will actually go but it may be a good option for the first few years as we transition to adding girls.

We have the same situation - packs HAD been defined by which school you attended, but we've been taking boys from the two other schools since their numbers were too low to support a pack.  Now having one of the other packs trying to get on it's feet again, this is worth looking into.  I don't know their Pack Master beyond having worked together to round up unwanted Derby cars, and don't know who their committee chair is, but our own Pack Master does and they have a decent relationship.

 

Meeting with our CC and Scout Master tomorrow night, though we don't really have any concrete info for Boy Scouts, so it's very preliminary.  They've invited a representative from our charter.  I'll report back- if there's actually anything to report!

[fred johnson]

Here's the problem that I see, as I'm not opposed to letting girls into Cub Scout, it's a problem of logistics.  Our CO is a civic club and we meet in their building.  We have 45 boys and we are bursting at the seams of what our building can accommodate. So, where do we put the girls who join?  We physically don't have the space to add more kids.  

 

Let's say this whole change is successful and I really really hope it is. 

 

IMHO, KYScouter reflected the biggest challenge.  As numbers have dropped for the last 15 years, packs have closed or merged.  Packs have started recruiting from multiple schools.  Successful packs will become too large to manage or too large to meet where they've been meeting.

 

IMHO, this is the biggest challenge.  If we got a 10% to 20% cub membership increase, it could be probably absorbed.  But if we get a 25% to 50% increase in new cubs, it would require creating new packs, finding new leaders and finding new places to meet.  That would be a good challenge though.  

[John-in-KC]

ADMIN NOTE:

 

Scouters are Courteous and Kind.

 

I have moved this to Open Discussion, Program.  The latitude given in I&P for controversial subjects is withdrawn.  Please keep the discussion to your thoughts on the mechanics of gender integration for Cubbing.

Edited October 16, 2017 by John-in-KC

[Cubmaster Pete]

In my experience, agreements among units about who will "take" what groups of incoming scouts only causes headaches. There are always exceptions and surprises with the membership.

 

So in talking to the other two packs, you might say "Our pack leadership has decided to accept girls, if you do not, please direct them to our pack."

 

 

I didn't clarify, but that was my intent. Thanks for bringing that up

[qwazse]

Met with our COR tonight. Ran by the possibilities. She (a former explorer scout) made clear that the CO will support whatever we think should be done.

Stay all boy? No problem.

Add a pack (and, later, a troop) for girls? No problem.

Meet separately? No problem.

Meet at same place and time? No problem.

 

This CO's basic need is to serve their community as broadly as possible. They themselves are losing members. So, for them, it's "go big, or go home."

[RememberSchiff]

To be sung at recharter 

 

Que Sera, Sera

 

Whatever will be, will be

 

The future's not ours to see.

 

Que Sera, Sera

[Cambridgeskip]

An observation about what happened in the UK when we started with local option.

 

Obviously while groups had the choice between being single sex or going coed the girls all went to those groups who were coed.

 

Then in 2007 we went fully coed. A decade later and many of those groups that stayed all boys are still either all boys or have very few girls, simply because the girls gravitate towards those perceived as girl friendly. So those groups have a disproportionate number of girls compared to the national average.

 

I suspect you'll see something similar in time.

[5yearscouter]

If you are running a one room schoolhouse version of cub scouting (all dens in one room cause you only have 1 or 2 scouts in each rank) this is probably going to be the hardest to implement as coed.  Because you will not have enough parent/leaders to make separate accomodations for gender. In that instance a suggestion would be to do a different night of the week for the girl dens (whether all the same pack or two different packs will depend on if you get enough core committed adults).  To help get more adult leaders, require all scout applications to come with an adult application attached with ypt certificate.  Then you work on the next trainings and get those adults running dens or whatever.

 

If you are running a full program of cub scouts with all den levels with training, it may be easier, if you have room in the building you all meet in to accommodate girl dens in the next room over. or if the dens meet in different people's houses then you need more houses.  the separate dens come together for inter den competitions and pack meetings but each den is able to meet on their own.  I think that is best case scenario for larger size packs. 

 

But again, you may have to force each youth application to come with an adult application attached, and additional payments.  But that means your minimum amount to charge is $35x2 + any pack fees.  So $100 a year scouting before doing any activities or uniforms.  yucko, but reality.

[Cubmaster Pete]

If you are running a one room schoolhouse version of cub scouting (all dens in one room cause you only have 1 or 2 scouts in each rank) this is probably going to be the hardest to implement as coed.  Because you will not have enough parent/leaders to make separate accomodations for gender. In that instance a suggestion would be to do a different night of the week for the girl dens (whether all the same pack or two different packs will depend on if you get enough core committed adults).  To help get more adult leaders, require all scout applications to come with an adult application attached with ypt certificate.  Then you work on the next trainings and get those adults running dens or whatever.

 

If you are running a full program of cub scouts with all den levels with training, it may be easier, if you have room in the building you all meet in to accommodate girl dens in the next room over. or if the dens meet in different people's houses then you need more houses.  the separate dens come together for inter den competitions and pack meetings but each den is able to meet on their own.  I think that is best case scenario for larger size packs. 

 

But again, you may have to force each youth application to come with an adult application attached, and additional payments.  But that means your minimum amount to charge is $35x2 + any pack fees.  So $100 a year scouting before doing any activities or uniforms.  yucko, but reality.

 

I plan to be honest with parents on join night next fall, and let them know "This is only a success with your involvement, if you don't help, this wont work." I do not think it will be an issue at the Lion or Tiger level, but for any girl who joins above that. 

 

I have a small pack, and generally we do not have mixed den mtgs. I plan to keep it that way, no matter if I have girls or not.

[Eagle1993]

Our CO had a board meeting and passed s resolution that essentially states they support our Pack's decision to either include or not include girls. It seems like a common theme from several COs. I do appreciate that they are leaving it up to us as their involvement has been minimal over the last several years.

[John-in-KC]

I suspect in the case below, we will find Packs for which data in Scoutnet does not equal reality at meetings.
 

 

If you are running a one room schoolhouse version of cub scouting (all dens in one room cause you only have 1 or 2 scouts in each rank) this is probably going to be the hardest to implement as coed.