Columnist Susan Snyder: No class in fleecing the Scouts

Friday, Aug. 22, 2003 | 8:37 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Brownie Scout meeting day was huge.

We got to wear our uniforms to school and stay in the library afterward to learn about bugs or art or how to make a cushion for sitting around a campfire.

The downside was that Becky Weezer, class bully, was always my "buddy" because my mom was troop leader, and I had to "be unselfish."

Fortunately, our school allowed us to hang around after the dismissal bell rang. I don't know how all those girls would have fit in our living room. (And I'm sure Becky would have pulled the heads off my dolls.)

So I hope the Clark County School District manages to come up with an alternative to its initial proposal of extorting, I mean, charging groups such as Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts upwards of $50 an hour to use a classroom for their meetings.

District staff told school board members earlier this month that it's costing $1.2 million to keep schools open for after-school activities -- activities that many times help fill in the gaps for parents and teachers who already are overworked.

Pat Miller, executive director of the Girl Scout Frontier Council, is among those working out a more equitable agreement. Previously, she said, nonprofit groups such as Girl Scouts could use rooms for free whenever there were school personnel already scheduled to be in the building.

The new proposal sought to charge everyone, no matter who was already going to be there. But who's to say a Brownie uses more air conditioning than a janitor?

"And there was no consistency," Miller said. "The fees were $30 or $50 an hour to $300 a month. It was all over the place. In some cases, they wanted us to pay half an hour of a custodian's salary."

Girl Scouts have 131 troops meeting in 78 schools. They average two hours per meeting, four times a month. At $30 per hour, the lowest proposed rate, it would cost $326,000 annually just for meeting space, Miller said. Boy Scouts were facing about $425,000 in such fees.

Considering most of the troops are based in the schools where they meet, it seems like we're penalizing kids for being involved in something constructive. And many of these troops already are running on shoestrings.

I gave a presentation to a Boy Scout troop on the valley's east side last year, and a third of the boys weren't planning to attend an upcoming camp-out because they couldn't afford to buy backpacks -- not even surplus ones.

A Cub Scout mother last week related the story of shopping at Goodwill to obtain Scout shirts for a couple of boys in her troop.

"I believe (district officials) will work with us," Miller said. "The school board seemed very responsive. We're partners."

Charging a Boy Scout $50 for a room where he learns about community service is the pits. But other pits are worth a buck or two.

Battle Mountain's "Festival in the Pit" Aug. 15 attracted some 2,000 tourists to the city of 3,000 that capitalized on a Washington Post writer's claim that Battle Mountain is "the armpit of America."

One Lander County commissioner called the Old Spice festival "the most successful event in the history of Battle Mountain."

Bet it smelled nice too.