Yeah... I'm with Critter and many others on this one.
I think the issue is less about the politics and more about structure. To this day I still don't understand why Boy Scout troops can't stand on their own like so many other good oganizations (PTOs, Lions' Clubs, Little Leagues, etc..).
Most PTOs have plenty of good work to do on their own and great missions and plenty of structural challenges on their own -- withou this odd-fitting add-on.
PTO=Parent Teacher Org.=School PTOs/PTAs are there for the teachers & children of the school. Other groups shouldn't try & use them. These other groups need to go through the school principal/BOE for permission to use the school, its not up to the ptos/ptas. The ptos/ptas are there for the teachers & students, not other groups. Keep ptos/ptas & other groups separate. It's very wrong of these other groups to even ask ptos/ptas to do this. Our scouts meet at leaders houses, churches, & schools (free of charge & with the principal's permission).
I still believe you can and should decline to charter based on legal issues, regardless of the emotionality of some of BSA's policies. Read the contract--and YES, it IS a contract-- that you would be required to sign. Ask yourself and your fellow board members if your PTO can fulfill ALL the requirements on the contract. Don't accept someone saying something like, "Oh that's just a formality, it'll never be enforced." You'd be signing a CONTRACT with your name and putting your PTO in a legal relationship with the troop. Recommend that the parent leaders of the troop form their own new non-profit organization in your state that will then serve to charter the troop. Surely, the adults who are committed to Boy Scouts should be willing to charter the group themselves. It seems a much more appropriate relationship in this day, than asking a PTO or other disassociated organization to charter the troop. I never heard back from the local troop who asked us to charter them; I have to assume they chartered themselves since I know the troop is still active.
This just recently came up for us. Here is the thing, we JUST voted earlier this month to drop the PTA and become a PTO. We even held a free spaghetti dinner so we would have bodies to vote <deep sigh> rather than the three or four plus a representative teacher from each grade level attend. Now, the Boy Scout leader calls me and wants us to Charter them since their last charter through the school expired. I asked him to send me the information and agreed to put it to the board at our next meeting (early in March). I, personally, will vote against this based on my own personal ethics regarding discrimination. HOWEVER, I don't want the other board memebers to feel pressured by this. I have explained my pov but stated that whatever the outcome is, I will accept. Now that I'm reading on, I am coming to believe that there are other issues involved. As a new group, I don't think we need the headaches.
The other thoughts I'm having are concerning the PTO being for ALL the children. This includes those from nonreligious families and same sex relationships. How can we then, in good conscious, sponsor a group that rejects some of the children?
I agree that the Boy Scouts have much to offer, I just wish they'd take the forward thinking of the Girl Scouts and come into this century. That having been said, in the real world we have to learn to work with BOTH sexes and with people who do not believe in God or are homosexual. My family chose to join the SpiralScouts because of this. The local Unitarian Universalist church sponsors our group, they dropped the Boy Scouts because of their discrimination a couple of years ago.
This topic hits very close to home. Our school district just implemented a policy where any group (unless it's a PTA or PTO) has to pay a stiff fee to use the school for meetings. Our after-school Spanish club even has to pay to use the school for classes.
We have a Boy Scout Troop and a Cub Scout Pack that meet at the school. The Boy Scout Troop meets weekly and uses two rooms - and it is costing them over $2000 a year to use the school. It is costing out Cub Scout Pack almost $600 to hold monthly Pack meetings. This is not to pay the custodian or anything, just to use the room.
These groups can only meet at the school with the principal's permission. Our principal told me that one of the local schools does not allow the Boy/Cub scouts to meet at his school because the principal is gay and does not like their discrimination practices.
As I said earlier in this discussion, I don't think a PTO has any place chartering a scout group. My boys are both scouts and I believe in the whole idea of scouting, but I lead a group made up of all different kinds of people that may not believe in the same things that scouting espouses. As a non-profit incorporated organization that by our bylaws cannot take a political stand I think chartering a scout group comes pretty darn close to to taking a political stand.
I had a discussion recently with one of our past-presidents and it turns out that they actually used to charter the Cub Pack and she had to make the decision not to do it anymore. The biggest problem is that as the charter organization you have to do the background checks on all the adult leaders and there is a huge liability issue, even if you have insurance (which may not even cover this). There is also a large amount of manpower needed to keep on top of the whole thing. I do the recharter each year for our Pack and it's a huge job - and then our charter rep (from a local church that now charters the pack) has to certify the whole thing.
