Earlier this week, most of us saw some significant change with the announcement that Eastern Carver County schools would be moving to distance learning and the governor’s announcement with restrictions on social gatherings.
I’m sure that you, like many families, have been wondering how this will impact Scouting and how the Pack will adjust our programming. Northern Star Scouting, our council who provides the professional support and direction, clarified the meeting guidelines for Scouting programs with the Minnesota Dept of Health. The council provided an updated guidance and powerpoint for how Packs and Troops can operate.
Key items for our Pack to know are:
• Scouting operates under the “Youth Programming Procedures”, much like youth sports, which are minimally impacted by the Nov 10th announcement
• As earlier this year, “Youth Programming” allows for program group sizes of no more than 15 indoors and 25 outdoors when following pre-screening procedures, wearing of face masks, increased hygiene (hand sanitizer), adequate space between program groups
• The largest change in the guidelines is that there is no longer eating or drinking allowed when at indoor meetings (still allowed outdoors)
For those who were at the October Pack meeting, these guidelines drove the structure of the meeting using den rotations.
Thursday night, the Parent & Leader Committee (PLC) met and discussed how our Pack will operate. While we could continue to operate Pack meetings as we did last month, given the feedback from parents and that decision in the schools, we’ve made the following decisions:
• All Pack meetings will be virtual for the near future
• Dens can continue to meet In-Person, if the Dens only meet outdoors (no indoor meetings) and follow the protocols including pre-screening and wearing of masks
o Den Leaders will reach out to families to understand how many would prefer virtual and may move their meetings to virtual for one or more meetings
• For families wishing to do only virtual meetings, we encourage you to join us for the virtual Pack meetings. If your Den is meeting in-person, you can work through the adventures on your own or join the Cub Connections program from Northern Star Scouting, which has virtual den meetings for every rank https://www.northernstar.org/News/eNavigator/introducing-cub-connections