Bryan, I don't think it's the district's job to tell me which troop to join.  I do think it's at least partially the district's job to be able to readily provide contact information for local troops. It took me nearly 2 months of bugging our UC, district committee, and calling the council office to get good contact info for ANY troops in the district. [Our Webelos II leader from last year moved to Hawai'i, and didn't leave us a good trail of breadcrumbs to follow.]

It would also be nice if there was some kind of criteria out there for what to look for in a troop. Many of our cubbing families have had zero contact with boy scouting, so they pick a troop based on meeting times, distance from the house, and whether they're going to have to continue to sell popcorn or not. We've had families surprised with things like:

the cost of dues

the expectations and cost for summer camp (we have a camp an hour away from us but many troops go elsewhere, like Camp Geronimo, or even out of state)

expectations for what equipment and uniforms the scouts will need

how the patrols are organized (some parents don't want their 11YO in a patrol with a bunch of 14YO's?)

how much emphasis the troop puts on what kinds of service projects. Do they do mostly outdoor stuff? mostly work with their CO or with someone like the Elks? mostly dust knick knacks at the scout museum?

what level of planning the troop does–is it a year in advance for trips? or two years? a few months in advance? a week in advance?

Thing like this would be good to know, right? I'm sure there's a lot of stuff we're missing that can make a difference in whether that troop is a good fit for the scout and his family. But, our district really doesn't support the process at all that I can see, from either side. The troops we visited weren't really forthcoming if we didn't ask the scoutmaster (and in one case the committe chair) a bazillion questions. If I hadn't contacted any troops for my den, there's *one* troop who tried to email our committee chair in late November. Too bad he had the info for last year's committee chair and we didn't get the message for weeks.

[Speaking of roundtable, tho, our district changed roundtables from Tuesday nights to Thursdays last year. Our pack and den meetings are always on Tuesday, so I haven't been to a roundtable since then. There are half a dozen packs at our end of the district with the same problem. I guess the committee will have to decide when doing schedules for next year if they care or not--but it's a tough sell. The only time we see anyone from district now that our last UC quit is for FOS, and they didnt even do that last year.]

Well, I think we've settled on a troop for the boys. I personally liked another troop a little better, but this one was a strong second. My son liked them both, but he wants to stick with his friend from the pack who's going to this one so that was the deciding factor.

We're doing our B&G / AoL this weekend but not crossing over until after the March pack meeting–the boys still have a couple of activity badges left to receive and we are thinking of doing the crossover at our pack's spring campout. We usually pick somewhere about an hour away so hopefully we can get some of the boy scouts to come out at least for the ceremony.

Once we're done with den meeting conflicts I might go to roundtable and put in my $0.02. I'm always a bit leery of talking myself into a new assignment, though. My husband may not be pleased with this plan, I think he's looking forward to getting Tuesdays back! [and the Sunday and Monday planning sessions. and the pack committee meeting evenings. and..]