NEED HELP!!!! Unjustified conflict between leaders and scouters

[ChristianB]

6 minutes ago, David CO said:

This makes it easy for me to give you my first piece of advice.  Support your scoutmaster.  That's the job of the ASM.  

My second bit of advice is to not do anything that is not part of your job description.  Let the other people make their own decisions.  Let the kids decide which unit they want to be in.  Let the committee set the unit policies.  Let the COR deal with the council.  

 

 

Thanks for this advice.

[Owls_are_cool]

I found myself in a similar situation as scoutmaster, where certain committee members wanted a scout expelled and I was not on board with it. One of their sons was the root cause of behavior issues, but they were blaming it on the scout they wanted expelled. 

They got enough committee members together to remove me as scoutmaster. However, adult positions in a Troop serve with the COR's blessing. So the COR and committee chair went to bat for me, removed the two parents behind the coup attempt, and I was reinstated as scoutmaster. 

So the route you should take depends on where your COR stands on this. If he/she is with the advancement chair, et al, then there is nothing you can do to stop this. You can fight a battle like my supporters in my troop did, but that is not a good example for scouts, especially since my troop split into two troops as a result. If the COR is on your side, they should be addressing this issue with committee members causing problems. 

My gut says that if your scoutmaster has decided to switch troops, then it is likely the COR will not address the issue. If I was in that position, changing troops would be the best option. You might be the next target, so following the scoutmaster might be a good idea. 

[ParkMan]

@ChristianB - welcome to the forum.

It strikes me that the core problem here is one of adult leadership.

The Committee Chair should be working with the Scoutmaster to ensure that the Committee is correctly doing it's role.  Further, the Committee Chair should be setting direction for the entire adult team to ensure that all the adults are working together so that the troop runs well.  The Troop model in the BSA is that the Committee Chair is the leader of the adult team of the troop.  That the advancement and finance chairs are feuding with the Scoutmaster is the Committee Chair's responsibility to sort out.

Individual adult leaders should not be undermining the Scoutmaster on program questions.  Advancement is the purview of the Scoutmaster.  The Advancement Chair's role is to facilitate the advancement process, serve as a champion, and provide oversight of the advancement program in a way to identify when kids are getting missed.  The Advancement Chair should not be deciding how quickly anyone advances.  Again, the Committee Chair should be involved here.

You want to do this the nice guy way, have a conversation about your concerns with the Committee Chair.  Talk to him/her about the adult drama you see and enlist the CC's help in getting it cleaned up.  The pace of advancement for a couple of Scouts is not an issue that should derail a well functioning troop.

If you want to do this a bit more aggressively, go to the next Troop Committee Meeting.  At the meeting bring up that you are concerned that there is friction between the adults.  Be prepared to say that you see the advancement chair superseding the Scoutmaster on advancement and that it's a problem.  Be prepared to point out that it's leading to Scoutmaster and his kids likely to leave.  Call these folks out and stir it up.

BTW - how big is your troop.  This sounds like the kind of nonsense you see in very small troops where the adults politics are preventing the troop from growing.

[ChristianB]

14 hours ago, ParkMan said:

BTW - how big is your troop.  This sounds like the kind of nonsense you see in very small troops where the adults politics are preventing the troop from growing.

Thank you for your advice, I am going to ask their father if he feels like it’s worth his time to stay first then I will proceed from there.

we have roughly 30-40 registered scouts.