Which is the best way to keep track of a repeated youth leadership position? For example, do you put an end date for a ASPL on the date of elections and then put a start date of the same date if they are in the same position again? IMO I would think not putting an end date on the position would save a lot of time but if that’s the case, how do you keep track of when elections were held? Noting it in the comments?
My girl’s troop holds elections the end of december and the end of may for terms that run 1/1-6/30 and 7/1-12/31. Since the terms run by the calendar, it doesn’t really matter when elections are held as long as they are reasonably close to when the new term starts (and as long as elections are held BEFORE the new term starts.)
We don’t bother with a start date/end date if a Scout ends up having the same POR after election.
We try to put notes in the Scoutbook calendar for things like Troop and OA elections, etc. There’s also a Notes field in each leadership position entry where you could add that info; but I don’t know if that would be easy to find.
I have started putting start and end dates for all positions, both new and continued. It helps in my mind for a couple of reasons.
First, it’s helpful in keeping track of whether or not we’ve updated the PLC list for the latest elections. Realistically, we get interrupted doing stuff all the time, and have occasionally had the wrong person on the list until someone asked about it. We had to go back and input the correct leadership role for the scouts so adult leaders on the committee side knew who to contact as QM without having to ask around.
Second, it allows us to track more easily how many times a scout has been elected to a position sequentially, so that at SMCs the question can be asked “You’ve been QM for three consecutive PLCs. What is it that you like about the role? Have you considered any other positions to possibly learn new skills?” without us having to maintain a separate list. Yes, this sort of thing is both rare and relatively memorable for us, but as the number of scouts increases, it’s harder for every leader to keep every scout’s current and past positions in mind. This provides a unified location to look it up before a scheduled conference.
Third, it’s helpful when we have transitions of leadership PoR in the middle of a cycle. If a scout has been QM for 18 months, then drops out 1 month into the new cycle, it would only show 19 months as QM assuming that “continued” positions didn’t have an intermediate date. If a scout has 18 months previously, and 1 month in the most recent cycle, that could tell a different story (particularly if there are several scouts with the same drop-out pattern).
I realize that a lot of this is handled automatically when you can directly keep track of things in your head. As a leader I’m finding more and more things I need to track in my head, both scouting-related and otherwise, and the more of them I can offload to some sort of tracking system (e.g. Scoutbook for PoR) the more head space I have to dedicate to things that require thinking more than just tracking. And, regrettably, youth leaders are not always as timely as one would hope in response to questions like “Who’s your scribe? The committee isn’t getting copies of the PLC minutes and troop meeting notes anymore…”
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