Proposals for Fall

As promised , your leadership for the boys troop and the girls troop got together last Thursday to have a lengthy discussion about what we know, What we don’t, and to brainstorm possible ideas about proceeding with scouting activities through the fall. The general consensus is that we would like to do some scouting activities, troop meetings, camping, merit badges etc. The challenge is how to accomplish those tasks given the social distancing and guidelines that have been given to us by the governors office.what is outlined below are a lot of the discussions ideas that we had and we would very much like some parental feedback before we make final decisions.

There will be a parents meeting for the girls troop and another one for the boys troop coming up in a couple of weeks where the final decisions will be announced. Please stay tuned for that. The meetings will likely occur via zoom, or possibly somewhere else at an outside venue.

TROOP MEETINGA- it is likely that we will not have the church as a meeting place at least through the fall and early winter. We had lengthy discussions about adding more on demand YouTube videos to get through rank advancement. We discussed the use of the zoom platform and have considered possibly announcing ahead of time what rank advancement will be worked on that particular week and if your scout needed that requirement they could turn into the zoom meeting, if they did not their meeting could be skipped that day. We have talked about having several zoom meetings throughout the week, each night covering a different topic. We also discussed having several zoom meetings all occurring at the same time on Tuesdays, each with a different scout leader, covering a different topic, or merit badge class. Your scout would just tune in to the zoom meeting that they needed.

We had discussions about possibly having a few meetings in Hamblen Park while the weather holds up for at least some of the younger scouts to start working through rank advancement.

LEADERSHIP- It is our understanding that every boy that had a leader ship position when scouts ended was able to continue technically being in their leadership position and receiving credit for that time through the present. However, we will be electing new leader ship in September. We are not 100% sure how that will happen in terms of voting just yet but I would like you to email Ms. Casey if you want to be either a patrol leader or one of the senior leader ship, such as senior patrol leader.
The leader ship will probably meet frequently and will be given responsibilities of monitoring and organizing their patrols potentially through some apps that we are investigating such as sign-up genius for camp out supplies.

The girls are also going to be selecting a historian in order to document the first steps, stages, and eagles from their troop!

More details about speeches and election night will be forth coming.

COURT OF HONOR- All of us feel very strongly that we need to have a court of honor that covered everything that the Scouts had earned after January. We wanted the scouts to have that opportunity to be recognized for everything that they have accomplished. What is in the works is  a court of honor on zoom where all of the awards are announced and then a separate pick up time at the elementary school, similar to how a lot of things were done at the end of the school year.

 

CAMPING- Our brand new girls troop is already planning a camp out for September. Please be on the lookout for a zoom meeting to be held by Jen Walter and Julie Tillman, the leader ship for the girls, to discuss a camp out. As for the boys true, that is a little bit more difficult because there are so many more of you we have to figure out a way to camp without violating the social distancing rules and the restrictions on the number of persons that are able to gather. The leader ship is going to be checking on campgrounds around the area to find out what is open. We are looking into Kit are brand new girls troop is already planning a camp out for September. Please be on the lookout for a zoom meeting to be held by Jen Walter and Julie Tillman, the leader ship for the girls, to discuss a camp out. As for the boys true, that is a little bit more difficult because there are so many more of you we have to figure out a way to camp without violating the social distancing rules and the restrictions on the number of persons that are able to gather. The leader ship is going to be checking on campgrounds around the area to find out what is open. We are looking into kit Price up north, Hiawatha, and some other locations. In order to make camping weekends work we know one thing for sure, and that is we are going to need a lot more adults to sign up to be registered members of the troop. When you are a registered adult you can be a leader at a campsite. This is going to allow us to have more flexibility in how we camp. We need to have at least one registered adults on every camp out. Right now we are considering camping together as a troop, But just making sure that all of the patrols camp separately from each other and do not mingle. The other possibility is staggering our weekends. That would mean patrols camp on different weekends along with as many registered adults as can go on that weekend. This would guarantee that the patrols do not mingle with each other, but it will require there to be a lot more registered adults so that the same leader ship is not being required to go camping every weekend. These are the initial ideas that we had about making camping work. We do think that the camping nights are still critically important and we are open to all other ideas that you guys might have to help us accomplish these camping nights.

SUMMER CAMP- We are already looking into making sure that we get registered at a summer camp for next year. Easton is always on the table. We are considering camp Bonaparte, which the boys went to several years ago and was a big hit. We are considering camp Parsons on the west side of the state, on the hood canal. We are considering camp Merriweather down by Portland, camp Makualla by Crater Lake. There will be more details about the Oregon camps coming soon and we will be making a decision about making reservations at one of our camps shortly.

SOCIAL MEDIA- One of the new innovations that we are considering is figuring out a way for the leader ship, both adults and scout leader ship to connect with the scouts directly. Emails such as this go out to the parents primarily and it is our assessment that the scouts do not usually see these emails and or check the website or the Facebook page. Since we are going to be working with the scouts primarily remotely we want to find a way to communicate with them directly, For accountability and encouragement. We would like the parents suggestions and comments and questions regarding whether or not they would be willing to give authority for their Scouts to receive text messages on their phones from the scout leader ship. This would be for things like reminders to show up for zoom meetings or reminders to complete tasks for rank advancement or if a scout completes a rank and has a board of review we would like to blast that out to the entire troop as a form of recognition that is instantaneous. We need your input into whether or not this is something that you think would be beneficial and that you would authorize.

POPCORN- Believe it or not there still is a popcorn sale going on. A while back an email update such as this had got out with directions about how to sell popcorn. There are extra rewards for selling online this year. In addition, Felicia Boyle is going to remain as the head of the popcorn sale this year, but her son Dylan will not be in the troop for very much longer and she needs to pass on her knowledge. She is looking for 2 to 3 parents to work as her assistants this year and who would work together as a team. The job is big enough that it really requires 2 to 3 people so as not to overwhelm anyone person. Anybody that’s interested would ideally have a scout young enough that they could help with popcorn for a couple of years Before they pass it on to the next. Please let me know if you’re interested. Thank you so much!