Scooby,
I'm not against the Scouts. My nine year old daughter is in Juniors. BUT, there isn't any protection from being included in a lawsuit if a PTO provides money, time, space..., even the $50 for the banner. A lawyer will include anyone that can have even the remotest contact. Exclusion agreements between the scout pack and the PTO will not shield the PTO from possible litgation. The same holds true with sponsoring a little league team. NO PROTECTION. It should also be noted that paying for busses or field trips is thread that can be tied to a lawsuit. This may be a bleak picture, but that is the society we live in.
Jon
Massey,
If their concern is liability, it shouldn't. Our pack personally gets the insurance offered by the BSA. It is only like $.75 per boy. That way if something happens while the kids are in our care, they are covered. To everyone else, we have a cub scout pack at every elementary school in our district. Most are sponsored by either the PTO, PTA or the school itself. There are only 2 that are sponsored by the church, and they happen to be catholic schools. As for SFilak's #1, all that is saying is that the charted organization (PTO, PTA, school, etc.) needs to pick out a trained cubmaster and more than likely that is going to be the person asking for them for the charter. Our principal also has the right to vote on any BSA elections or become a member of the distict committee if he wants to. One thing he does do is that he makes sure that every leader or committee person is trained to work with the scouts. But he doesn't need to do that. We cannot recharter until we are all trained. As for finding a meeting place, how hard is that?? Our PTO would just reserve another room in the cub scouts name at the beginning of the year for once a week, on another night than their PTO meetings. Now since we are chartered by the school, we just ask directly. Not a big deal. Other than finding a meeting place, finding a qualified Cub Master, and signing some papers, our sponsors have basically nothing to do with us. We don't ask for money and we don't ask to be included in their activities. In fact during our town's Christmas parade, we beat the PTO for best float and we paid for, and enrolled in the parade on our own. Basically what I am trying to say, is that sponsoring a cub scout pack is not a big deal, as others would make it out to be.
The problem that we ran into is that the boy scouts thought they should always take presidence since apparently we sponsord them way back when. They thought that they should do the colors for Veterans Day and not the girl scouts, and they thought they should get first pick on gym use after school above the other non-profit groups. Luckily our "term" was up with them this year and we declined to continue to sponsor them.
Believe it or not, I have not been able to come back until now to check all of your replies-I have been too busy on the phone with the BSA. I apologize for not describing sponsorship, though it appears as though some have already touched on it. We have to sign a charter agreement which states that we are bound to the BSA guidelines-which state that we must assume responsibility for choosing appropriate leaders and what goes on during their mtgs.
The ? came up re: liability because this is not something we have been overseeing in the past and as one person outlined (?been there)it has turned ugly. Our board has now had some nasty things said about them (silly and ridiculous) and quite frankly I think most of them are concerned that we have NO control over what they do, i.e. field trips, camping,etc. I believe the BSA will be stacking the mtg. and it will get passed, but feel very bad that some of our board members are feeling that their concerns are unjustified and may resign because of their concern. Our superintendent has instructed all principals to NOT sign because it would establish "entaglement"...
Thanks for all your help-nice to see the different opinions out there.
There is a legal contract that must be executed between the chartering organization (i.e. sponsor) and the pack. As Suzi described, a parent group may not be capable of fulfilling the legal obligations of that contract. When the charter for our boy scout pack came due a few years ago, the PTO president concluded it was inappropriate for the PTO to enter into that legal contract. It was an ugly, hurt-filled situtation, but legalities, not personalities, were at the core. In the end, the school signed the charter, and our pack continues to thrive.
