NYLT staffing question

[jjlash]

Our NYLT program is only a few years old but has grown steadily.  For the past two years we have run one course with one Troop of 48.  This year we are going to increase our registration limits a bit, push for 60+ participants and run two Troops during the same course.   Im looking for lessons learned about making the jump to two Troops and in particular about sharing staff between the Troops. 

The plan is to do staff development together, at least until the end when we are at camp walking through things on location.  Here is what Im thinking for staff positions. 

Director - one per Troop
    SPL - one per Troop

Backup Director - one per Troop
    ASPL-TG - one shared between Troops

ASM Program - one shared between Troops
    ASPL-Program - one per Troop

Adult Admin - one shared between Troops
    Youth AV/Tech - one per Troop

Adult Quartermaster - One shared between Troops
    Youth QM - one shared between Troops

Troop Guide - 10 total.  If we have fewer than 10 patrols we would pair up some of the guides to help raise the quality where someone is not as strong in a particular area.

The adult positions are what we usually run.  We add a second director and second backup but the other positions are shared between the Troops.  This seems reasonable for the work load and for the proximity of locations will be using.

Last year we had an ASPL-TG and ASPL-Program youth but their responsibilities were not well defined up front and they were not well coached so they were really more of a "general use" ASPL.  Is one effective ASPL-TG sufficient to coach and mentor 10 TGs?  About half of the 10 will be first time staff.

We have not had a youth QM in the past.  Im not sure there is enough work to justify both an adult and a youth QM.  I think the youth QM could do most things during the course, particularly the staging of materials for the program team.  But, the adult will still be needed to do things like ordering and purchasing especially for the kitchen. 

The Tech youth position is an attempt to turn over more responsibility of executing the course to the youth.  The challenge will be to find a youth who has the tech skills and is responsible enough to be in such a critical role.  Most of the youth we believe to be responsible enough are already in other senior staff positions. 

Thanks in advance for any input.

 

[satl8]

Why not just increase the patrol members to 8 per patrol?  The syllabus allows for 6-8 youth per patrol. With 8 patrols that would take you up to 64 participants. The minimum size of a Troop for NYLT is 4 patrols, but I think it is much better to have the interaction of 6-8 patrols than it is with 4-5 patrols.

I do agree with having 10 TG's though, seems one or two always drop out at the last minute or aren't quite up to speed yet by course time.

[Sentinel947]

My Council did 5 courses spread over 3 weeks. The first two weeks have 2 courses going simultaneously, starting one day apart. One starts on a Sunday, the other on a Monday. I'm not claiming my council does it the best or most optimal way, but this is how we do it. 

This allows us to have one set of program supplies. We do all of our staff development weekends together, but split up into courses for much of the weekends. I can send you some sample schedules if you'd like to see what that looks like. 

Overall, we have a few adults that serve as advisory staff, One who leads the overall NYLT program, an advisor for admin, program, and QM. This ensures that new adults we get in those areas get some training, which lets the Course Directors/Scoutmasters focus on working with their youth staff instead of preparing adults. It's a luxury we have thanks to willing volunteers who are happy to teach others but are done with executing the actual program. 

For each course's Adult staff: we have a course Director(Scoutmaster), an Assistant Course Director(Assistant Scoutmaster for Program), an Adult QM and an Adult Admin. None of these are shared between courses ideally, but we have when necessary. So 3-4 adults is typical. 

For Youth Staff:(I think our Youth staff's are a little bloated, but we want to engage the youth that we have that want to be on staff. Even with this arrangement multiplied by 5, we still have to turn away staff applicants each year.)
We have an SPL.

We have Two ASPL's per course. (more on this later) 

We then have two  "Senior STG's." It's a position we've mostly made up. They support training and preparing the TG's for course. If we can't get enough TG's for course, or somebody gets sick or injured and goes home, we have a highly capable replacement TG. This is a bloat position, but I think it does have some value. 

We have two youth QM's. They do all of our food preparation, portioning, and some meals they cook. Most of the meals we have the participants cook in their patrol sights. They help with material staging, but typically the ASPL's and STG's do most of the materials staging. We don't have a youth admin, unless we have a 9th TG, who effectively becomes a youth admin. 

We then have 8 or 9 TG's per course to start. as @satl8 points out, sometimes TG's drop out or aren't up to speed. 

@jjlash You pointed out a problem I encountered this year as an ASM of Program. Our ASPL's hadn't had their roles clearly defined by the SPL, and I hadn't realized I had a role to play to help them define that until we were on course. Day one was a little rough, but they figured it out. If I return to NYLT staff next year that's something I'll try to have addressed. They ended up falling into a set up like this. One was effectively Program/AV/Backup SPL. The other ASPL fell into more of the Logistics and Materials prep guy. It worked for them and they were happy with it. I'm not sure how optimal it was, but was good enough for me. 
 

 

Edited August 16, 2019 by Sentinel947

[jjlash]

2 hours ago, satl8 said:

Why not just increase the patrol members to 8 per patrol?  The syllabus allows for 6-8 youth per patrol. With 8 patrols that would take you up to 64 participants. The minimum size of a Troop for NYLT is 4 patrols, but I think it is much better to have the interaction of 6-8 patrols than it is with 4-5 patrols.

I do agree with having 10 TG's though, seems one or two always drop out at the last minute or aren't quite up to speed yet by course time.

Short answer - there are logistic and political reasons to go with two Troops rather than bigger patrols or more patrols.

We had not considered 8 patrols of 8, but I do not think that will work in the space we have.  We have considered going to 10 patrols of 6 - we think we can make this work in the space but it will be very tight.  In either case, this is not scalable - even if we make 8 patrols of 8, or 10 patrols of 6 work we could not go bigger than those.  We just do not have spaces big enough to fit that many people.

Yeah - the 10 TGs number does not include a couple of extras in case of drops.  That is always a challenge - it is great to have them if you need them, but what to do with them if you dont need them?

I agree the interaction of 6-8 patrols is better, but by the same token I think the dynamics and learning is better by keeping patrols at 6 people or even 5 if necessary.

 

[jjlash]

1 hour ago, Sentinel947 said:

My Council did 5 courses spread over 3 weeks. The first two weeks have 2 courses going simultaneously, starting one day apart. One starts on a Sunday, the other on a Monday. I'm not claiming my council does it the best or most optimal way, but this is how we do it. 

Interesting - at our last meeting we discussed running them one day apart to help with the program materials issue.  The hurdle that we were not able to work through in a way that we liked was food.  We will operate out of one kitchen.  The meals are "pack out" - that is, the kitchen puts together a box+cooler and the patrols prepare meals in their campsites.  The meals are designed to have increasingly more preparation and cooking so rearranging them is not practical.  This means that the kitchen would be preparing different meals for each Troop.  Probably this could be worked out if needed - may have to revisit this option.

You have youth QMs do the food prep.  Hm....Does your staff eat with the patrols for every meal?  We eat with patrols for breakfast and dinner but the kitchen prepares our lunch and we eat in NYLT hall.  Youth could definitely prep and portion the patrol site meals that we do.  Something to look into....

 

1 hour ago, Sentinel947 said:

They ended up falling into a set up like this. One was effectively Program/AV/Backup SPL. The other ASPL fell into more of the Logistics and Materials prep guy. It worked for them and they were happy with it. I'm not sure how optimal it was, but was good enough for me. 
 

I overlooked backups on the youth side.  ASPL-TG would be backup for TGs (need to figure out if there is more than 1 TG that needs backedup).  I would not have ASPL-Program be backup for anyone, ASPL-Program will have more than enough to do preparing for and cleaning up after activities.  AV/Tech will also be completely busy running presentations.  Need to give this part more thought....

 

 

[HashTagScouts]

I would suggest each troop have an ASPL for TG.  If you have half of your TG as first-timers, the ASPL may need to step in and devote additional time with those patrols/mentoring the TG.  It would be spreading them very thin if they had to oversee two troops.  My $.02.

[Sentinel947]

1 hour ago, jjlash said:

Interesting - at our last meeting we discussed running them one day apart to help with the program materials issue.  The hurdle that we were not able to work through in a way that we liked was food.  We will operate out of one kitchen.  The meals are "pack out" - that is, the kitchen puts together a box+cooler and the patrols prepare meals in their campsites.  The meals are designed to have increasingly more preparation and cooking so rearranging them is not practical.  This means that the kitchen would be preparing different meals for each Troop.  Probably this could be worked out if needed - may have to revisit this option.

You have youth QMs do the food prep.  Hm....Does your staff eat with the patrols for every meal?  We eat with patrols for breakfast and dinner but the kitchen prepares our lunch and we eat in NYLT hall.  Youth could definitely prep and portion the patrol site meals that we do.  Something to look into....

 

I overlooked backups on the youth side.  ASPL-TG would be backup for TGs (need to figure out if there is more than 1 TG that needs backedup).  I would not have ASPL-Program be backup for anyone, ASPL-Program will have more than enough to do preparing for and cleaning up after activities.  AV/Tech will also be completely busy running presentations.  Need to give this part more thought....

 

 

We eat with the participants for most meals. There's a few meals the staff prepare for the participants. We have one evening where the Scout's Scoutmasters visit, so staff cook that meal. Staff also cooks breakfast the day the participants return from outpost. Otherwise our meals are similar. The food is crated up by patrol and the participants send two patrol members to pick up their supplies from the QM's. 

If you are interested, I can ask our QM adviser and see if he'd be open to connecting with you and sharing how we managed food. You can PM me and I'll text him and see what he says. If he agrees, I'll share his contact details with you. ( I imagine he'd be excited to talk about it.) In really dumbed down terms, we made sure that the meals alternate between how demanding they are on the kitchen. So if Course 1 has a meal that requires a good deal of things to be warmed or cooked, the course 2 is going to be on a meal that requires very little prep. 

I don't know if it's really necessary to run food the way we do with the setback schedule. It'd be operationally a lot simpler to do the same meals for each course, but with the program being different each day, it's nice to have simpler meals on the early days or times when the schedule is tighter. 

As for the responsibilities of an ASPL, I'm sure it varies from place to place and course to course. Whatever works for you all, keep it. If I'm a Course Director/Scoutmaster, I don't much care how the ASPL's divide up the work so long as they and the SPL are happy with it and they accomplish what they need to. But I think it's important for the Scoutmaster to nudge the SPL to sit down with his ASPL(s) and not assume the ASPL's already know what to do. 

[jjlash]

Thanks for the great input, please keep adding thoughts.

 

Sure @Sentinel947, if your QM is willing to share that would at least give me some other ideas to consider.  Regardless how we arrange the patrols and how we arrange the schedule, managing food for that many people out of the space we have will be a challenge.  Maybe we can move the dry goods out of the kitchen and use one of the other buildings to pack/portion them, hm...

And that is our challenge in general - with this increase in size we are at the limits of the space we use.  The next step will be to move to the other camp, but since we hold the course during staff week of summer camp, we'll also have to change when we hold the course.  Ah - good problems to have.