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What I’m excited about is the potential for budget parity, which is something our local ward tries hard to achieve anyway, but it’s nearly impossible with the scout fees today. It’s a racket. Girls should be able to do high adventure stuff, too. There’s really not a good reason they can’t, except that it’s so doggone expensive to keep paying the dues in scouting. Just going on it without those dues is much more affordable. hawkgrrrl wrote:
What I’m excited about is the potential for budget parity, which is something our local ward tries hard to achieve anyway, but it’s nearly impossible with the scout fees today. It’s a racket. Girls should be able to do high adventure stuff, too. There’s really not a good reason they can’t, except that it’s so doggone expensive to keep paying the dues in scouting. Just going on it without those dues is much more affordable.
Totally agree on this one. Hopefully there is now room to give the same attention to activities for both YW/YM
hawkgrrrl wrote:
What I’m excited about is the potential for budget parity, which is something our local ward tries hard to achieve anyway, but it’s nearly impossible with the scout fees today. It’s a racket. Girls should be able to do high adventure stuff, too. There’s really not a good reason they can’t, except that it’s so doggone expensive to keep paying the dues in scouting. Just going on it without those dues is much more affordable.
I’m going to be completely honest here, when I read what OON quoted:
Quote:Church leaders have long been aware of this concern. This new program brings the spending into balance for youth ages 14 through 18. This will continue to be a factor in the ongoing exploration and creation of a worldwide youth program.
I took it to mean that the two programs will be in balance because the church will now budget peanuts for
bothprograms. nibbler wrote:I took it to mean that the two programs will be in balance because the church will now budget peanuts for
bothprograms. Possible. In our stake “high adventure” has long been a stake activity separate from Scouts. The cost is much less that traditional Scout camp and generally even cheaper than YW camp. However, in all cases the cost is born mostly by the parents anyway. The cost of Scouting comes from registration and awards. The only change I see here is that some (perhaps many) older YM will now not be registered (and they weren’t earning awards for the most part anyway). It is also my understanding the the registration fees actually come from an account separate from the ward/stake budgets.
DarkJedi wrote:
It is also my understanding the the registration fees actually come from an account separate from the ward/stake budgets.
As a former ward clerk, I can confirm that cub scouts and boy scouts both have their own budgets separate from the YM and YW budgets. I imagine the cub scout budget will remain unchanged for now and the boy scout budget will be drastically reduced since it will only be for 11-14 year olds. And that the YM and YW budgets will become more equal.
(As a clarification, in our ward the cub scout budget was under the umbrella of primary and the boy scouts under the umbrella of YM but were still separate items.)
DarkJedi wrote:
nibbler wrote:
Shouldn’t all boys earn their Eagle by age 14 anyway?🙄 Is this really much of a change? From what I’ve seen in my ward the kids already don’t do scouts starting at around that age. They’ll do an occasional venture scouting campout but mutual night has nothing to do with scouts.
To me this sounds like formalizing in policy what has been practice for a long time.
Neither of my boys earned their Eagle by 14, and it’s rare in our ward that anyone does. I also note both of my boys attended non-church troops for some time, but that was actually in their earlier years when our Scouting program was in a shambles. One of them did continue to do activities with the other troop after we got a new SM in the ward. They were both also interested in Scouting and like outdoor activities, etc.
And, our Mutual nights do center on Scouts. What happens is that boys who aren’t interested in Scouts just don’t come. This new program might change that and it’s one of the positives I see in it. I do recognize that in other places it’s different and Mutual night (I actually wish they’d change the name of that) for boys is often just basketball night. Again, I see the change to having a formal activity outline as positive but I also think those wards that have weak or uninterested YMPs will continue to have basketball night.
Our YM program is very small. We have no active priests, one active teacher (who is close to earning his Eagle), and three active deacons (I think one is 13). It’ll be hard to implement this program for one or two kids. Our Scout troop includes several non-member boys. That brings up another whole question – what will become of them? There are some over 14.
I agree the LDS-specific BSA programs for 14-18 have only been lukewarmly done if at all. But getting your eagle by the time you are 14 is hard work – and I would argue (after 10+ years of being a scoutmaster) that they don’t get as much out of it. Every case of a 13 year old I saw had a HUGE imprint on their backside from the parent(s). Many of those were “DONE” with scouting once they were an Eagle. If you see non-LDS troops that is more odd to leave at that point.But it seems the more they say, “It isn’t about the gays (or the girls possibly coming in)” the more it feels like it is about those. Just like “I am not doing it for the money” usually means you partially ARE doing it for the money.
DoubtingTom wrote:
DarkJedi wrote:
It is also my understanding the the registration fees actually come from an account separate from the ward/stake budgets.
As a former ward clerk, I can confirm that cub scouts and boy scouts both have their own budgets separate from the YM and YW budgets. I imagine the cub scout budget will remain unchanged for now and the boy scout budget will be drastically reduced since it will only be for 11-14 year olds. And that the YM and YW budgets will become more equal.
(As a clarification, in our ward the cub scout budget was under the umbrella of primary and the boy scouts under the umbrella of YM but were still separate items.)
Ours is (was, since we haven’t had Cub Scouts for several years) like that too, Tom. But I think the registration fees themselves are paid out of something that doesn’t show up at all in the ward budgets and in some way is paid indirectly from Salt Lake, perhaps funneled through the stake. Either way, though, I think you’re right about how money will be redivided since I think fewer older boys will now earn awards and over some time we will have fewer Eagles. The sad thing is, I don’t think YW will see a boost, rather YM will see a cut. Still equalized form that point of view, but I think the point of those of us who champion fiscal equality between the programs always thought of it as giving more money to the YW so they could have better activities. Where each ward decides to put the “money saved” will be up them them, I suppose.
In my stake in Arizona this will mostly be a non-event. The Venture/Varsity programs are almost completely dysfunctional, and when a boy 14+ wants to get his Eagle, he does it on his own anyways. Funding won’t change because almost all of the scout costs are the 8-13 year olds anyways. In our stake the YW/YM budgets are the same per capita, plus there’s a scout budget that’s separate. That scout budget will only get marginally smaller because almost all scout activities are for the 12/13 year old scouts, so girls budgets won’t increase much at all. Mutual activities for 14+ are whatever the boys want to do. Activities are under the guise of Duty to God, but it’s really mostly doing things that are somewhat career, sports, or church related that will keep 14+ boys somewhat interested in the church. As others have said, for my ward this is an acknowledgement of how things have worked for years anyways.
LookingHard wrote:
Every case of a 13 year old I saw had a HUGE imprint on their backside from the parent(s). Many of those were “DONE” with scouting once they were an Eagle. If you see non-LDS troops that is more odd to leave at that point.
My very TBM sister in law living outside of Ogden said several months ago that the push was to have the boys get their Eagle by the time that they turned 15 … then it was mission prep the rest of the way. At the time I had thought it to be a funny comment but maybe having 14 and under individuals as eagle scouts is more common in the church than I had realized.
This article certainly spins the church’s decision as directly related to the LGBT issues. Maybe a little too deliberate of a spin, but still puts the church on the defensive. And in my mind, any time that happens is a chance for the church to improve upon its divisive and hurtful rhetoric regarding these issues, whether or not the reason for the decision has anything to do with them. It will be interesting to see if the church responds to these accusations as to motive in a positive light, remains silent, or just reaffirms what they already said.
Also, has anyone looked at the list of potential activities that YM/YW can do? Things like cleaning the church or taking pictures of a cemetery are surely going to excite our youth into more engaged participation!
This change gets scouts in the Church closer to what it was 50 years ago when I was in scouts. Be hard to go to Mutual now after turning 14, but did you see the note about once a month? Maybe not so bad. DoubtingTom wrote:This article certainly spins the church’s decision as directly related to the LGBT issues. Maybe a little too deliberate of a spin, but still puts the church on the defensive. And in my mind, any time that happens is a chance for the church to improve upon its divisive and hurtful rhetoric regarding these issues, whether or not the reason for the decision has anything to do with them. It will be interesting to see if the church responds to these accusations as to motive in a positive light, remains silent, or just reaffirms what they already said.
Also, has anyone looked at the list of potential activities that YM/YW can do? Things like cleaning the church or taking pictures of a cemetery are surely going to excite our youth into more engaged participation!
Over dinner my son asked, “so do they have a program to replace it. I mentioned the activity of cleaning the church and my son said, “Oh Crap” and his mom got on him. he he heThere is also talk about allowing girls to also join the BSA. Not sure if that played into it.
But like the saying I heard over and over as a youth, “You can choose to do something or not, but you can’t choose the consequences.” In this case, “you can say all you want it wasn’t about the gay issue, but you can’t convince others how they view your decision.”
I did find this commentary interesting with some history
http://religionnews.com/2017/05/11/mormons-scale-back-involvement-with-boy-scouts-whats-behind-it/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://religionnews.com/2017/05/11/mormons-scale-back-involvement-with-boy-scouts-whats-behind-it/ It is very likely that the recent actions of BSA, with regards to homosexuality, transgenders, and girls heavily influnced the Church’s decision to withdraw. Of course, they can’t explicitly say that’s the reason; but I can guarantee the Church would not’ve left BSA otherwise. I expect the Church will fully withdraw within the next year or two. As for earning the Eagle Scout Award, in my experience, boys will either get their Eagle Scout at age 14, or they will wait until right before they turn 18. Scouting already greatly dies down after 14. But I imagine earning the Eagle Scout Award will no longer be a rite of passage for young men.
Here is a more journalistic interpretation of the Scouting policy. https://www.yahoo.com/news/mormon-church-pulls-older-teens-boy-scouts-132902626.html It seems to imply that a long term movement away from Scouting for ALL boys is signaled by this change to the program for older youth.
You could also look at it the way a business guy would. When we have supplier who we want to maintain a relationship with, but who is not behaving, it’s not uncommon to reduce the book of business we have with them, reroute the business to competitor for a while, or otherwise signal they are at risk of losing their business with us unless they stop doing something that bothers us. So, you could look at the shift away from BSA for older boys as a warning shot over the bow to the BSA. It is not a huge amount of boys, but significant enough to send a message to the BSA…
The thing I don’t get is that the BSA always lets religious groups implement the program as it fits their own communities and religious values. So, whether the BSA allows gay leaders, or opens the program to girls and women in their template for the program has no effect on any religious organization that disagrees with those policies — other than the trend it shows in society.
Does the entrechment of values the church does not support in society by such BSA policies warrant the church’s withdrawal from scouting eventually?
Willhewonder wrote:
This change gets scouts in the Church closer to what it was 50 years ago when I was in scouts. Be hard to go to Mutual now after turning 14, but did you see the note about once a month? Maybe not so bad.
I didn’t know that weekly was not a requirement before – even when I was YMP. With my own kids being very involved in school activities (sports, music, drama, etc.) and not to mention homework, every week was tough and didn’t happen often. Less often might have worked better, although the conflicts were often with games or performances. With 6 high schools in my ward it would be impossible to schedule around all of them.
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