Same here. It was a Roundtable topic in February and March before the unregistered users were removed.
If, @RaymondAcocella, as a unit, you decide not to attend Roundtable, nor use the tools provided by the BSA to manage your Troop, it’s really not fair to complain months after the fact that you don’t like the change that was communicated and implemented.
So what I’m reading from your replies is that you currently do not, AND you do not want to comply with YPT? That’s what it means when you say you want unregistered (and by extension, non-YPT and non-background checked) adults to have access to any of the youth information in Scoutbook.
As far as I recall the unit advancement chair is a function of the committee and as such should be a registered leader. Perhaps the committee guidebook is wrong for all unit types. Perhaps it should read that all units can do as they darn well please with unit structure.
@Stephen_Hornak has it exactly correct.
Your unit has been breaking the rules for as long as you have had an unregistered adult working as Advancement Chair. Now that BSA has tightened their security and limited access only to registered persons, you are upset that your access is denied?
Our volunteers are all busy and have other obligations in their lives, and for this reason, we should all be grateful to the service they provide on behalf of our youth. But if an individual is too busy to complete 90 minutes of training on how to protect our youth, then perhaps they simply do not have the time to be a volunteer. I agree that money should never be an impediment to scouting - if money is an issue, but the volunteer is valuable, then the Unit should pay for the registration fee.
Can National and Councils and Units do a better job of communicating with each other? Probably, and I am sorry that this came as a surprise to your AC (and apparently, everyone else on the Committee and SM staff). But this idea of picking and choosing which scouting rules apply to any individual or unit is insane.
And yes, it is a technical solution to simply limit the PII available to unregistered adults. But that is not the path BSA has taken - instead, they have simply said that to work with our units in any capacity, you need to be registered. Period. There is no reason to create a technical workaround to what is clearly a policy decision.
**I have been reading the comments to my post and I am feeling like I am being singled out for stating an objection!** It seems to me that there are two (2) camps at play here: 1) The "die hard" BSA/Scoutbook is always right and we must follow everything that they put out and 2) the leaders and volunteers that make the program work, knowing and doing our best to support the scouts that are in it.
I understand the rules and I believe that the my message is being lost in all of these attacks on me and what I stated. I have been in many positions in my scouting adult life from Den Leader, to Scoutmaster (with very little assistance from my local council and district), to current COR and Eagle Scout Coordinator (we just recently celebrated 21 scouts advanced to Eagle, since I restarted my Troop in 2004). I know what I am talking about! To have Scout leaders attack me because you think I am somehow un-educated in the Scouting program, you are mistaken!!!
My troop is probably like many across the country trying to give the best program to the scouts that we serve! We do the best that we can to keep and try to draw in more scouts, with little money, lots of our own time and paying many expenses on our own. To have Scoutbook leadership make rules from "ON HIGH" and not to consider the impact to local units is idiotic. As I have stated in my previous replies, there should have been greater thought to forcing a change when this could have been done on the back end to give units greater flexibility in entering needed advancement and other information to its sites.
Those that continue to reply that this was done in the best interest of scouts’ Personal Information are being as short sighted as the Scoutbook program/web site is. It is clunky, hard to navigate and was not designed to allow anyone (volunteer or paid executive) the ability to do their jobs. I will state this again “The site should have been designed to allow greater roles and permissions and protections of all of the information stored on it”.
To those that have replied that this information was put out at Round-Tables, just don't know what real BSA Volunteer life is! I dislike going to Round table because it has turned out to be a collection of "lifers" with a look at me attitude and very little information is ever put out that is useful. I can tell you that this did not come from my local district and I have even been told by my Council that they have little to do with Scoutbook and don't have access. So your arguments don't hold water!
This is my last post on this topic because my pleas for help have fallen on ‘deaf ears’. Defend your position and feel self righteous, just know that those defending this system are not listening to real life leaders and don’t care as to how the program is run. IF I am proved to be wrong, I will admit my being wrong… Can you?
I will add that in some locations not taking YPT or government approved training and getting background checks, parents or guardians working with other family children’s data or the those children directly may be breaking local laws related to preventing child abuse, not just BSA rules.
In some locations BSA has been able to get BSA YPT approved as a government approved training that meets government requirements. I would expect a council to know what laws apply to charter organizations and units that they serve.
@RaymondAcocella - this is not an airport… not need to announce your departure… but I would again suggest that you read through the Charter agreement, the Committee guidebook and any of the of the training documents. The best offer I have is for you to prove me wrong.
@RaymondAcocella Feedback is a gift, especially if it points out that you have been making an unintended error. Please do not, for the sake of the Scouts in your organization, decide to leave in a huff and instead listen to the very good advice that’s been provided to you.
The Original Poster asked a legitimate question with a simple answer - many of you who complain to admins users are not being Scoutlike are dragging it on. Please look at yourself. This post is closed and solved with a simple answer.
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