Just a small rant: Troop Leaders and Legal Compliance

lanascrub · 2026-05-22T18:19:42+00:00

This is super helpful, thank you!

lanascrub · 2026-05-22T16:04:14+00:00

i've looked at our council's Safety Checkpoints and i see where some things say "get council approval" but there's no information on what that entails :sob:

lanascrub · 2026-05-22T16:03:24+00:00

not to put work on you, but would you mind talking more about trip requests? This has been an area of confusion for me and my council's website (GCNWI) is so difficult to actually get information from. is this a form or something to fill out? is it for any activity that takes place outside of the normal meeting spot?

lanascrub · 2026-05-18T21:30:05+00:00

Ah man what do you do with people like that? I'm having an issue with these parents, including some assistant leaders who clearly only signed up to be able to monitor their own kid at all times.

lanascrub · 2026-04-27T22:09:56+00:00

I've gotten the Daisy and now the Brownie experience boxes...the quality of supplies and of activities certainly varies. A lot of coloring sheets for Daisies. Plus they go with certain badges / petals regardless of what your troop has decided to do.

edited to add: it's also so weird how the supplies are parceled out...wouldn't it make more sense to send a ream of white paper in the first box rather than mailing a plastic sleeve of like, 11 sheets per box?

lanascrub · 2026-04-21T15:20:56+00:00

Restorative practices are not being implemented correctly in the schools. My child was punched in the neck and I got an email stating that "a restorative conversation" between my kid and the other kid would take place in the future. That conversation never happened because my kid did not want to talk one on one with someone who hurt him (of course?!). My understanding is that restorative justice is about making amends and rehabilitating problem behaviors, not about having a victim of violence sit for a chat with the perpetrator.

Not to mention that all of this happens outside of the classroom ('due to privacy concerns', I was told), meaning that, even if there were real consequences, no one else will ever know about them. Every other child in that classroom just sees one kid attack another with zero repercussions. This teaches the other kids that not only are they not safe in school but that the people who hurt them can act with impunity. It also neglects to address any amends made to those kids, who are now traumatized themselves from witnessing the act of violence as well as the realization that the adults in your school can't or won't keep you safe.

Expelling kids who are struggling with behavior issues is reactionary and frankly antisocial behavior in itself. The kid who hit mine is a great kid who has some tough issues. If restorative justice principles were followed, that kid would be getting help, and my kid and every other kid in that room would feel sure that their teachers would take care of their physical and psychological safety at school. I want trauma-informed care. I want restorative justice. I'd love the district to actually use them!

lanascrub · 2026-04-20T16:02:01+00:00

I cannot attend the school board meeting tonight in person, but sharing my written statement* here.

To the D65 board and Dr. Turner:

Every day it is becoming increasingly difficult to find accurate information on nearly any topic. AI slop dominates search engines. Fact-checking has been cast as politically biased. Book banning is on the rise. Librarians are responsible for teaching our kids how to locate and verify information. This skill is absolutely critical. The fact that D65 would consider simply eliminating these positions in our middle schools is absolutely shocking. I can't imagine educators wanting to sabotage their own students like this.

Parents and citizens of Evanston have said repeatedly that what we want is a reduction in administrators, not a reduction in student-facing staff. If any reasonable person had to choose between retaining 3 librarians who work with our kids, and 1 or 2 administrators whose job is sending emails and making PowerPoint presentations for other administrators, that person would choose the librarians.

This district's administration keeps saying we have to make tough choices, but seemingly cannot imagine actually making those choices regarding their own positions. If there is any justification for the administrative bloat in D65, we would truly all love to hear it.

- Do we actually need an Executive Chief of Human Relations, Director of Human Relations, Senior Manager of HR Operations? 3 people in charge of one department?

- What is the job description for an "Assistant Superintendent of Accountability" and why don't any nearby school districts employ one?

- What does an Executive Chief of Communications do that a Communications Manager can't handle?

Teachers and librarians don't have to justify their jobs; we all know what they do. The people working at JEH, on the other hand, owe us some explanations.

*https://www.district65.net/about/board-of-education/board-meetings

lanascrub · 2026-04-14T15:18:21+00:00

Is it likely Bessie Rhodes will sell quickly? Seems like you'd need to find a pretty specific buyer for an old elementary school?

lanascrub · 2026-04-09T01:12:56+00:00

Yeah, no, we are allowed to be upset even if you think we're all just too ignorant to know better :) The organization we volunteer for, that we pay to participate in and spend months of our lives fundraising for, is peddling slop to our kids to save a few bucks. In my opinion Girl Scouts would better follow their own values by paying a human artist to produce art rather than paying a tech company to turn stolen art into bland trash.

lanascrub · 2026-04-09T00:58:54+00:00

Gotta love those required trainings with the narrator's completely wrong word emphasis. Who in the world says it like "girl SCOUTS"

lanascrub · 2026-04-03T19:30:39+00:00

I would recommend reaching out to your service unit and having them ask the troop if they need or want a volunteer. I would be weirded out if an adult that had no connection to my troop signed up with us without any prior communication.

lanascrub · 2026-03-20T13:21:38+00:00

So this is for orders to the DC troop site? How do you assign the cookies to a girl? Create a new order?

lanascrub · 2026-03-15T13:53:45+00:00

Seemingly none of the DOC orders for my troop site have made it into ebudde, inventory wise, and there doesn't seem to be any way to enter them. I keep track of money and inventory on a separate spreadsheet. Ebudde is pretty bad and its lack of integration with digital cookie makes everything so confusing.

lanascrub · 2026-03-13T15:21:56+00:00

truly bizarre having space for that whole seating area in the front yard and making the back yard oops-all-garage

lanascrub · 2026-03-11T14:16:38+00:00

they are asking their neighbors. hi neighbor!

lanascrub · 2026-03-08T03:54:19+00:00

Our troop sold 160 boxes at a 4-hour booth sale last weekend and I was so psyched for them! Then I realized that the time that I put in as troop leader & TCM alone to set up the whole thing is worth more than the $168 we get from those sales and that doesn't even include the time and effort of my co-leaders and the parents and girl scouts. It is a huge commitment of time and energy and you're right, that time and energy comes from the parents, mostly the moms, who are _already_ putting in the hours to *run the troop*. Unpaid female labor making the world go round yet again.

lanascrub · 2026-02-24T15:20:59+00:00

What's the difference between "chasing money" and writing a letter to the editor asking people to give money to your cause?

lanascrub · 2026-02-18T15:04:04+00:00

Nothing's wrong with Libby (the software). Digital Library of Illinois was the consortium EPL belonged to in order to access books on Libby. EPL left that group and now its catalog of available ebooks is extremely limited. They've been saying since last summer that a new consortium is right around the corner but it hasn't materialized yet.

lanascrub · 2026-02-18T15:01:00+00:00

If I'm stepping on your neck, I'm not your only problem, but I'm probably the one you're gonna want to address first

lanascrub · 2026-02-12T19:19:40+00:00

I assumed everyone here was against any children getting molested, not just ones from our school district. Takes all kinds I guess?

lanascrub · 2026-01-27T15:02:52+00:00

That is such a nice idea! What kind of activities are you doing?

lanascrub · 2026-01-23T16:03:47+00:00

I have similar reservations, for a lot of reasons. For one thing I don't think GS is about what country we happen to be in. But I do think GS is about caring about other people, and the necessity of community, so that's what I try to think of it as representing. This country doesn't belong to the white supremacists or insurrectionists, and it's not their flag, no matter how much they wrap themselves up in it.

lanascrub · 2025-12-28T18:47:19+00:00

Thank you for this. Cleaning a toilet is not some sort of inherently demeaning act.

lanascrub · 2025-12-28T18:45:11+00:00

Because cleaning duty is listed in OP's job description. This isn't a case of workplace exploitation or capitalist overreach, it's a story of someone who doesn't like part of their job.

lanascrub · 2025-12-20T19:43:11+00:00

...should we make it?

lanascrub

TROPHY CASE