I agree 100% w/ dd!!! THis is being overplayed. It might help when posting to name the STATE you are in that way MORE ACCURATE ADVICE CAN BE SUGGESTED.
Here is information on why BSA has charter organizations.
"The unit is owned and run by a sponsoring group called a chartered organization. The chartered organization receives a national charter yearly to use the Scouting program as a part of its youth work. The local council helps the chartered organization understand the program, however it is the chartered organization's program and is part of the chartered organizations youth work. These groups, which have goals compatible with those of the Boy Scouts of America, include religious, educational, community groups, fraternal, business, labor, and professional associations.
Each chartered organization using the Scouting program provides a meeting place, selects a Scoutmaster, approves the unit adult leadership, appoints a unit committee of at least three adults, and chooses a chartered organization representative."
And I have to disagree with "NOt Convinced" who said his local troop does not do background checks. The LOCAL COUNCIL does the background checks, NOT the troop, when the applications are turned in. The leaders have to be approved by the COUNCIL or the troop is not able to recharter. It sounds like some of the posters are very bitter toward an excellent organization. My PTO does absolutely ZERO checks on the volunteers who work with children.
Chuck, your post regarding liability being overplayed, in my opinion, is careless. Look at the frequency of sexual misconduct claims performed by various Boy Scout leaders and perhaps that is the real reason why so many pto/ptas are backing off of the charters. You never did address the true reason why Boy Scouts requires a 3rd party charter organization and people would like to know. With regard to having parents involved in ptas who with no background checks, our district requires ALL parents who work in any capacity on school property to be fingerprinted by the school district. This fingerprinting runs through the Department of Justice database and uncovers all misdemeanor and felony convictions.
I, too, have many questions regarding the Boy Scouts requiring a 3rd party organization to charter them. EXACTLY, what is the reason? The poster above is obviously very involved in the organization so he has provided some standard pc Boy Scouts responses. However, I too would like to know why a) school districts refuse to charter them and b) National PTAs are refusing to charter them. Can't just be liability issues..There are so many questions that cannot be easily explained away. I know firsthand that our local boy scout troop who asked for our pto to charter them had NOT and does NOT conduct background investigations on ANY of their leaders, which means there is no oversight at a higher level. Also, the boy scouts may offer liability coverage on the chartering organizations. However, read the fine print....the coverage is only secondary to any other insurance the charter organization has in place. They may want you to think they are fulling protecting their charters, but clearly this isn't the case. So, if a liability claim were to arise, your chartering organization (which so far we have been referring to as PTO/PTA) would have to spend the PTO/PTA money defending the Boy Scouts claims. Does anyone see a major conflict of interest here?
That's good information. Thank you. Especially the info about the liability umbrella. I can tell you that a *ton* of PTOs and PTAs get confused on that, so I'd suggest that the scouts provide better materials re: chartering organizations to those prospective charetring organizations.
While I think your answers are helpful, I'm still not entiely convinced. Why is it that scouts require a third-party chartering organization (whereas as far as I know no other orgs do)? This is a fundamental question for me.
And then even if we answer that first question, I still question why the PTO would be the right starting point. It almost sounds like in your description that the chartered troop would be like a school club akin to the basketball team or the debate team or the ski club. An optional extra-curricular organization for kids at the XYZ school. All of those (including scouts) are great. But those others wouldn't be chartered by the PTO; they'd be chartered, in effect, by the school or the district. Shouldn't scouts go that way if they want to be a schol-based scout troop. It's just not the PTO's role to start/oversee/charter *other* school clubs. The PTO is in and of itself basically a school organization (of a different kind).
