Evaluating Girls Joining Scouts BSA -- Part One

[Cburkhardt]

Evaluating Girls Joining Scouts BSA – Part One

Question One:  How effectively was the roll-out of all-girl Scouts BSA Troops handled?  Be very specific about how thing might have been done differently.

Notes:

In preparation for the fourth anniversary of all-girl Scouts BSA troops this February, I will be posting a different question each of the next five weeks regarding how the addition of all-girl troops transacted and what the impact has been on the BSA and the youth we serve.  I will focus on Scouts BSA and not Cub Scouts.  This first question deals with the initial roll-out.  During subsequent weeks I will deal with the quality of all-girl troops, the impact on young people, whether there are course corrections that should be considered and how the future of the BSA has been impacted.

Many of you know I am founding Scoutmaster of a large and successful all-girl troop.  Things for our all-girl troop have proceeded quite well these past four years – so I won’t pretend I am neutral on the overall development.  However, we should take a serious look at what has happened and identify good ideas for improvement.

In these threads I ask that we not re-argue whether allowing girls to engage in Scouts BSA programming was the right decision.  Those issues were fully argued years ago and the addition of girls to Scouts BSA is irreversible.  If you want to engage in that conversation again, please start your own thread over in the politics and issues category.  These threads will focus on program.  And, I will be tough on folks that make unsupported, overall conclusions such as “the girls have ruined everything”, or “female scouters have shown they can’t do the job”.  If you want to talk like that, you better be prepared to support your conclusions with clear facts.  Readers on this blog are not swayed by that kind of talk. 

[Cburkhardt]

Here are a few thoughts on my first question.

Timing.  The starting date for all girl troops on February 1 seemed odd.  It caused us to do everything off-cycle, such as recruiting chartered organizations.  Young people usually don’t think of joining new things in February.  It required us to work harder and through the Christmas holiday for no apparent reason.

Linked Troops.  There was overwhelming encouragement by management to form all-girl Troops at chartered organizations that already had all-boy troops.  I think a great opportunity to expand Scouting to other potential chartered organizations was missed.

The Eagle Exception.  Allowing girls (and similar-aged boys) to continue working on Eagle after age 18 during the implementation transition period seemed unnecessary.  It caused a deforming “hurry-up” rush for many unit leaders who were brand-new.  Some Scouters naturally wondered whether some “18 month” Eagles truly fulfilled the letter and spirit of the requirements.

Rapidity of Decision and Announcement.  I am glad the announcement allowing all-girl troops was issued immediately after the decision was made, rather than letting things drip out.

PR and Program Materials.  These were first-class and very useful for those of us forming these new units.

Being Firm in our Direction.  I am glad BSA was unapologetic and not defensive about allowing all-girl units.  It was great to see us step forward with clarity and confidence after so many years of equivocating on social issue and trying to please everyone.

[BetterWithCheddar]

9 hours ago, Cburkhardt said:

The Eagle Exception.  Allowing girls (and similar-aged boys) to continue working on Eagle after age 18 during the implementation transition period seemed unnecessary.  It caused a deforming “hurry-up” rush for many unit leaders who were brand-new.  Some Scouters naturally wondered whether some “18 month” Eagles truly fulfilled the letter and spirit of the requirements.

The BSA has long permitted youth to earn Eagle in 18 months, so I do not see questioning whether new female Scouts have "fulfilled the letter and spirt of the requirements" as a valid critique of girls in Scouts BSA. We can debate that in the program at large. (And @Cburkhardt, I know that was not necessarily your opinion. You were just framing the discussion)

I worry less about new 16- or 17-year-old Scouts earning Eagle in 18 months than I do about 12- or 13-year-olds earning Eagle in that same amount of time. I do not mean to suggest that all the younger Eagles are undeserving (surely, there have been a few outstanding youths to earn the award at the age), but most of us have seen an Eagle packet or two that has raised an eyebrow.

[DuctTape]

The concept of linked troops was good on surface and if managed well, likely quite successful at the sharing of resources.

In my experience, the implementation of linked troops was not even close to the ideal. The reality I have seen is co-ed troops instead with adults using linked troop verbiage. These troops struggle with the implementation not because of the introduction of girls, but because they did not have a strong (or even basic) understanding or use of the patrol method. Basically the girls troop implementation was less than successful because they joined a boys troop which was not successful in its own right. All the problems associated with a boys troop which does not use the patrol method, and other issues were amplified with the introduction of girls into their mix. The adults for the girls troop learned from bad examples.

So, the implementation area which could be improved is in defining the linked troop structure, with more guardrails, oversight and adult training from outside the established boys troop to ensure success of the girls troop (and improve the boys troop).

[nolesrule]

I wasn't around when things got started, because we were living in another state in Feb 2019. My understanding is that our district decided to funnel all interested girls into a single "super troop", and the expectation was that it would eventually split into other units throughout the district. If that was indeed the plan, it didn't work very well, as our district only has 2 girl troops, with the second one being started by a single family that split off from that original troop, with no one else following.

[malraux]

13 minutes ago, nolesrule said:

I wasn't around when things got started, because we were living in another state in Feb 2019. My understanding is that our district decided to funnel all interested girls into a single "super troop", and the expectation was that it would eventually split into other units throughout the district. If that was indeed the plan, it didn't work very well, as our district only has 2 girl troops, with the second one being started by a single family that split off from that original troop, with no one else following.

I don't know about a supertroop being the right way, but I do think that scouting is better done with a larger unit than several smaller ones. We are probably better off with the goal of forming quality unit instead of a quantity of units.

[skeptic]

And there is considerable evidence that the best way is to simply allow coed, as does most of the rest of the Scouting world.  

 

[malraux]

12 hours ago, Cburkhardt said:

Timing.  The starting date for all girl troops on February 1 seemed odd.  It caused us to do everything off-cycle, such as recruiting chartered organizations.  Young people usually don’t think of joining new things in February.  It required us to work harder and through the Christmas holiday for no apparent reason.

I think the goal was to have something ready to roll out for 5th grade girls coming from cub packs. Though at the end of the day, any arbitrary date is gonna have issues.

The other issue with timing is that covid almost certainly screwed over a lot units, and it hit about 1 year after the first girl troops started.

Now other roll out question might be how well older scouters were handled. I wasn't at the troop level when it happened, but my impression is that vocal opposition was allowed for longer than I would have preferred.

[nolesrule]

54 minutes ago, malraux said:

I don't know about a supertroop being the right way, but I do think that scouting is better done with a larger unit than several smaller ones. We are probably better off with the goal of forming quality unit instead of a quantity of units.

I don't disagree, but location and meeting night/time can have a lot to do with long-term success, not just the initial size of the troop. We're in the second troop. It currently has 10 scouts, but it's located in one of the outer population centers of our district. My daughter was the 5th scout on the charter. it's 12 minutes from our house. The initial "super troop" is 25 minutes from our house and requires driving past the location of the troop we joined.

[mrjohns2]

1 hour ago, skeptic said:

And there is considerable evidence that the best way is to simply allow coed, as does most of the rest of the Scouting world.  

They said there was considerable evidence that simply allowing coed was not the best way. They showed how many other countries saw little uptake in girls and a big drop in boys. This was shared by a person on the committee to allow girls during a national webcast. 

[malraux]

48 minutes ago, nolesrule said:

I don't disagree, but location and meeting night/time can have a lot to do with long-term success, not just the initial size of the troop. We're in the second troop. It currently has 10 scouts, but it's located in one of the outer population centers of our district. My daughter was the 5th scout on the charter. it's 12 minutes from our house. The initial "super troop" is 25 minutes from our house and requires driving past the location of the troop we joined.

I do wonder how much of that is covid related. Locally it seems like most units mostly stopped growing during covid. And I’d be really reluctant to have been trying to start a new unit in 2020 or 2021. 
 

but yes I’ll believe that many areas made the mistake of growing too slowly. 

[malraux]

Speaking from the Cub Scout side, I have two main complaints. First, at the Cub Scout level they should have gone coed dens from the start. All girls dens spanning multiple grades doesn’t work for most units. It’s being fixed officially soon, but should have happened sooner. 
 

second, while I understand the rules for youth protection make sense for drop off situations at the troop level, the rule that cubs must have a female scouter at the activity are troublesome at the den level. If parents are there, it’s weird that ypt isn’t covered by that situation. For overnighters I understand but hour long den meetings?

[skeptic]

1 hour ago, mrjohns2 said:

They said there was considerable evidence that simply allowing coed was not the best way. They showed how many other countries saw little uptake in girls and a big drop in boys. This was shared by a person on the committee to allow girls during a national webcast. 

Anyone that has watched adolescent youth in school group interaction recognizes that the girls will step back often if a strong boy asserts himself; but often when a girl takes over a group activity, the boys become more active, even though not taking charge.  We need to simply let the youth determine things in each incidence, but two units with the same sponsor are just superfluous and a waste of financial resources as well as available leaders.

[Cburkhardt]

Thanks everyone for the great comments.  And for the rest of you, please consider contributing to this month-long series of conversations.  Here are some reactions to the thoughts shared.  They are primarily based on my personal experience in founding an all-girl Cub Scout den, which became a feeder that helped form our all-girls Scout BSA Troop for Girls in February, 2019.  We have 50 girls, a 14-member Scoutmaster staff and reasonably active number of parents and Troop committee members.  We have done summer camp every year, sent two crews to Philmont this year and have had five Eagles so far.  We are a stand-alone girls Troop, meaning we are not linked to a boy troop and are the only Scouting organization at our Chartered Organization.

18-Month Eagles.  My comment is limited to the temporary transition rule which provided that any girl (or boy) who first joined Scouts BSA then was given an automatic extension of up to 18 months beyond their 18^th birthday.  This led to a bubble of older youth who were pressing hard to finish within the 18 month extension.  It just presented a deforming situation at the very time we were starting a new unit.  Our Troop had only one of these circumstances, which culminated in an aggressive parent yelling at me in front of the younger girls because I was unwilling to drop everything else and become a personal advancement concierge to her desperate 19-year-old daughter.  Thankfully they left the Troop.  Our five Eagles have fully earned their medals in a traditional manner.

Linked Troops.  The linked all-girl troops I am personally aware of are all small (about 8-15 girls) and don’t seem able to offer the full program.  Some function largely independent of the boy troops, but most seem to engage in some joint activities – such as campouts.  The appearance to an outsider is that they function as girl patrols in a larger boy troop – and just continue to do the program the boy troop has always done.  I am aware of only one linked-troop situation in the council that seems fully co-ed in operation.  There are only a few non-linked troops in the council like ours, and these are larger and seem better run than the linked troops.  My impression is that they are larger because the troop committee and parents fully focus on the girls and conduct the troop program in a manner that reflects the abilities and preferences of girls at this age.  As examples, the all-girl troops have longer meetings (because of longer attention spans) that are not scheduled at night (avoiding walking home in the dark).  My big take-away from the entire experience is that stand-alone troops are the way to go.

Going Fully Co-Ed.  I think segregating troops by gender was the right way to go during the roll-out.  My experience these past four year is that we have achieved more for these girls under a segregated format than we would have done if co-ed.  For instance, every youth officer is female.  That provides leadership experiences for the girls without taking away from the boys.  Our parents and leaders like it this way and would not seriously entertain a change to a co-ed format.  Our scoutmaster staff would not want to deal with the boy-girl interplay either.  Going fully co-ed at the very start might have made the startup process significantly more complicated.

COVID.  I’m sure this complicated the roll-out and probably led to dropped units.  I don’t think girl troops and boy troops would have handled things any differently because of COVID.  The only real difference is that all of the girl troops were just starting when COVID hit.  Our troop continued to meet live throughout the process (outside, with masks) and doubled our tent purchase so we did not have to share tents during campouts.  We just blasted through the difficulties. 

YPT Coverage.  During the roll-out, we did not have sufficient numbers of female adults able to camp.  We spent time recruiting families with mothers who were outdoorswomen to solve the shortage.  Now we are majority female in leadership and do not have difficulties.

[MattR]

On 12/18/2022 at 1:47 PM, Cburkhardt said:

As examples, the all-girl troops have longer meetings (because of longer attention spans) that are not scheduled at night (avoiding walking home in the dark).

So you have meetings on weekends? Or after school?