Adding Girls to Pack

[EagleonFire]

So i am still confused on how this is going to and is working. I keep getting different information. Do girls join the existing pack and work side by side with the boys? Or do Girls join the pack and still have to work separately from the boys? Or do girls form their own packs?

Will the same be for Troops? 

How are overnight campouts to be run?

Sorry for all the questions, but I still cant find 1 definite answer.

[MikeS72]

10 minutes ago, EagleonFire said:

So i am still confused on how this is going to and is working. I keep getting different information. Do girls join the existing pack and work side by side with the boys? Or do Girls join the pack and still have to work separately from the boys? Or do girls form their own packs?

Will the same be for Troops? 

How are overnight campouts to be run?

Sorry for all the questions, but I still cant find 1 definite answer.

IF everything holds true, this is how things should work.

A CO may choose to remain a boy only pack, with no changes.  They may choose to sponsor both an all boys pack and an all girls pack, who operate independently of each other.  They may choose to make the existing pack co-ed, with dens that are gender separate; girls in one den, boys in another.  At this point there should not be any co-ed dens.  If a pack chooses the co-ed model and does not have enough girls for separate age appropriate dens, they may have a mixed age den of girls.  (kind of like back in the dim past, when dens were made up of boys from the same neighborhood, regardless of age)

The current plan for troops is that if a CO chooses they may remain boy only.  If the CO wants to bring in girls, it will be in a girl only troop.  That troop can share a COR, committee, and ASM's, but must have a different SM.  At this time there should not be any girl patrols in a boy troop.

I do not know if this will hold true a few years from now, but as of now it is the way things are supposed to work.  There are numerous published records and charts detailing these options, they just do not get reported accurately.  I am sure that most of the news coverage has been done by people who do not take the time to actually research the facts before writing or going on air with an inaccurate report.

Time will tell.  Regardless of how things play out, I intend to do whatever I can to see that the pack and troop that I serve in, and the units I serve as a commissioner succeed.

[EagleonFire]

Thanks!

[EagleonFire]

I have 1 mother pushing really hard for us to drop the Camp Fire Club we started 3 years ago and transition to Cub Scouts.  It really sounds like 1. We wouldn't have the manpower to do so. 2.even though it is allowing girls in it really inst set up to be an inclusive environment.  

[Eagle1993]

Cub Scout camps... several of our scouts have started attending various council camps over the last several weeks.  None of the camps have all girl dens.  If girls are present they are simply integrated into the Boy dens.  This is probably due to the limited number of girls (1-2 per Den) and lack of volunteers.  I would have made the same call, but it does put the whole notion that this will not be coed into question as Packs will see similar numbers for the first year or two. 

 It will be interesting to see how they run them next year when more girls are present.

[Hawkwin]

16 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

Cub Scout camps... several of our scouts have started attending various council camps over the last several weeks.  None of the camps have all girl dens.  If girls are present they are simply integrated into the Boy dens.  This is probably due to the limited number of girls (1-2 per Den) and lack of volunteers.  I would have made the same call, but it does put the whole notion that this will not be coed into question as Packs will see similar numbers for the first year or two. 

 It will be interesting to see how they run them next year when more girls are present.

My council camp allows for tagalongs and community day camp so we have a few girls at camp but my daughter is the ONLY Webelos 2 at camp this week (1 out of 25 with one of the other 25 being a female tagalong) so she of course is in a patrol with seven other boys.

[Eagle1993]

Recruiting season is wrapping up this year.  We have over 90 Scouts registered, I expect several will drop and we will end up in the mid 80s.  (We have some casual scouts and we have made the change to strictly enforce advancement requirements.  Our Pack had a long history of handing our ranks and our current leadership has decided to change that... so we expect some to drop.) We currently have 18 girls in our Pack and it varies greatly by age.  Our largest pack size in the last 10+ years was 74... so we are definitely up even excluding Lions which is by far our smallest den.

We are now pulling in girls and a boy from other schools who’s Packs have decided to stay boy only.  The girls are easy to explain but there was a boy as well.  The boy was best friends with a girl and they wanted to be in the same Pack. 

We have received no negative feedback from parents.  There are a few that said they are “interested” in seeing how the dynamics change (if they do).   One dad said his son had threatened to quit if we added girls but now wants to keep participating.  One girl (young) actually asked why there were boys in the Pack.  Otherwise it is a non (or at least limited) issue in our Pack. 

One of my leaders was talking to a parent of a girl who recently joined and explained that he was concerned that we might negatively impact GSUSA.  The parent said that without our Pack her daughter would have no scouting available as the GSUSA Troop collapsed when no parents wanted to volunteer.... and other Troops were difficult to join.  Strong GSUSA Troops will be fine in our school, but we are there for those without a scouting home.

Next up recharter.  It will be interesting to see if there is more attrition than in the past. 

[Eagle1993]

On 10/16/2018 at 1:35 PM, Eagle1993 said:

Next up recharter.  It will be interesting to see if there is more attrition than in the past. 

So, our final count hit 73, with 17 girls. 

We had two girls drop, one due to sports and Irish dancing and the other as the girl who dropped was her only friend in the pack.  

We had 22 boys drop.... one moved and most due to sports.  Looking at years past, the only major attrition increase was our Lion to Tiger Scouts. I do think we lost a lot of scouts due to a nice but poor den leader.... that was a lesson to watch new den leaders more closely in the future.

Recruiting was a bit tougher this year as the school prevented us from emailing all parents.   We have done that in the past as the school does not allow us in their doors for recruiting, but now they told us to not email parents as well.  

I asked my den leaders if any boys left due to girls, they said no.   Most of the ones that left rarely showed up to meetings anyway.  I know we can’t know for sure, but we saw nearly no loss of Bear or Webelos Scouts... only younger ones.  That seems to be consistent with years past, before girls.

Our Pack is now functional a coed pack.  On paper we do talk about boy and girl dens, but in practice it appears coed.  We were not able to recruit enough leaders nor garner support from parents to split up Den meetings.  In some cases this is helping boy dens (the Tiger den is run by parents of the girls) and in some cases it helps the girl dens.  We tried the multiple age den meeting last spring, and we didn’t like the results.

Not sure if I’ll add more to this thread.  Adding girls was a bit more work due to YPT rules, but seeing the results was worth it.  What worked for us will not work in all areas.  Unit leaders know their parents and youth more than the District, Council or Nationals.  I also know Cub Scout age youth may handle coed Scouting differently from older youth.  

Overall, I think our Pack’s implantation was successful.  We have an active and growing pack that can serve all youth.