CAC North Star Unofficial Website

How do I Register as a District Scouter?

Posted on May 18, 2015 Updated on April 14, 2016

With the influx of new Adult Applications for District, many people have questions about what a checklist of task are to be properly enrolled for District.  Here is as complete a checklist as I can determine, based on my experience in the past 45 days.

• Adult application with all questions answered (according to recently cherry-picked Council Director of Field Services Rob Hemmelgarn, this is a Spring 2015 new point of emphasis for BSA) and both Applicant signature lines executed (i.e., (1) criminal background check authorization and (2) promise to abide by BSA policies and procedures).
  • District Position Description. In the blanks on the form, all district positions will need to be written out in longhand. No unit codes apply, so you can ignore the key in the instructions.
    • For District Committee positions, the title used should be “District Member-at-Large.” The actual district position is assigned by the District Chairman and not through this application.
    • For District Commissioner Service positions, the title should be “District Unit Commissioner” or the specific title accepted. Later adjustments will be handled in a different manner by the District Commissioner.
  • Signature of supervising District Officer.
    • In the case of applicants for all District Committee positions, the application must be signed by John Wiebke, as 2016 chairman of the District Committee.  John will be at the District Committee Meetings on first Thursday of each month and will be signing applications at that time. At other times, you contact John directly to arrange Committee applications processing.
    • In the case of all applicants for the District Commissioner Service, Jeff Heck must countersign the application. All Commissioner Service applications should be sent to Jeff directly for him to process.

• National Membership Fee of $25.00.  If a person is already a Registered Scouter, no fee is required, because he is already a member of the National Council. If a person has no current registration with BSA, a check, credit card number, or cash must be paid to the Council Registrar Sharon Cone for $25.00 (or $2.00 per month if enrolling mid-year) for national council dues plus a $1.00 council insurance premium payable to Crossroads of America Council must be stapled to the application. (The only exception to this is Merit Badge Counselors. They are encouraged to pay the $1.00 premium for liability coverage and are invited to become members of the BSA but are not required to do so.)
• Current Youth Protection Training.
  • If the applicant is current on Youth Protection Training: If the applicant is current YPT (meaning not expired nor set to expire in the next 90 days), a printout of the YPT certificate from myscouting.scouting.org or my.scouting.org is requested to save processing time, but not required.
  • If not current on YPT, a printout of the PDF from the online YPT course certifying course completion must be stapled to the BSA Adult Registration. (See screen shots below for where to find YPT training online.)

• Required Training. According to the policies set by Council Commissioner Rick Tardy, supervising Jeff Heck, no Commissioner Service applicant will be eligible to serve until they have completed the in-person position specific training for their job.  In other words, they will not accept Commissioner Fast Start Training.
  • For district committee members, we have a training session in the works.  Watch this blog and the district calendar for updates on scheduling. The training required is District Committee Basic Training. This is not required to register (unlike the commissioner service), but is required within 90 days of registration. This course is a one-and-done, meaning if you have ever taken District Committee Training or its predecessor, you do not need to take it again.
  • For district commissioner service, three persons are able to train Unit Commissioners.  Stu Bowes is the Assistant District Commissioner for Zionsville and Jeff Westcott is Assistant District Commissioner for Training. Jeff will be the primary trainer.  Stu will be the primary back up on training for Zionsville.  Jeff Heck will be secondary backup on training for the entire District. The training required is Unit Commissioner Basic Training. Council Commissioner Rick Tardy requires all novice commissioners complete their basic training before the adult application can be tendered to Commissioner Tardy for final approval. (Previously trained commissioners do not need to do training again, but are encouraged to attend the class or do online video training for the new Commissioner’s Tools software on my.scouting.org. This website is only accessible once the commissioner is fully enrolled.)

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    For adults who have not been previously active as an adult volunteer, the e-learning class “This is Scouting” was also required. It is still a good orientation to scouting for novices. This is an online video course. It takes about 45 minutes. You will need to login to your e-learning account and click through to “This is Scouting.”

If you have never taken a class, your bullet point in front of the class title will be blue and the link will read “Take Course.” If you have started but not completed the course, your bullet point will be yellow. If you have completed the class, it will look like the picture above.

If you have any questions about these issues, please contact Steve James or Jeff Heck.  We may not know the answers, but we can seek answers for you.