Communication issues with Girl Scout Leader
My daughter is in a Girl Scout Brownie troop (with girls age 7-8 years old), and there are unfortunately a lot of communication issues with the Girl Scout leader.
A ton of the parents have been frustrated by the lack of communication that the leader gives. The first year, she gate kept a lot of information and kept parents in the dark about what was happening as far as planning events, our budget, camping trips and scheduling. Some suspicions of the parents were that the leader did not want to give up control, and wanted to do it all herself. We would show up to meetings, and not know what was going on, or how to support her bc she kept us in the dark.
She does, and currently does a great job working with the girls. She communicates wonderfully with them and really takes the girl led philosophy of Scouting to heart. Which is great, she leads with integrity and leads the scouts in an engaging way and supports the values and mission statement of the Girl Scouts.
However, she needs a lot of help with communicating with the adults. Some parents have brought it up to her, and have tried to help, encouraging Parent Only Meetings (where we can discuss the budget, annual events, the cookie season, the calendar, what badges the girls could possibly work on). She seemingly begrudgingly attends those events. We just asked to hold 2-3 meetings a year. But she doesn't really take to heart any of the feedback the parents give. She thinks the parent meetings are pointless and don't need to happen. She doesnt want to plan any future meetings even though we have asked for at least 3 meetings (beginning of year, beginning of cookie season, and end of year).
Also, at the beginning of our scouting experience we all agreed the regular Girl Scout meetings should be max twice a month, and no more than 2 hours. She agreed. Yet she just put out a calendar for the whole year where we meet up every single weekend. Not every other weekend like we agreed. She says going to meetings is optional, and no one should feel like they have to go to all of them. But then of course our girls feel bad when they dont have one of the badges, the leaders daughter has.
In addition, a bunch of the girls have showed a lot of interest in doing water related events (pool party, going to a water park, kayaking). When some parents have tried to organize it, she just shuts it down, and says the girls need to decide it. The girls have been asking for it for 2-3 years and she keeps putting it off. If this is Girl Led, why isnt she okay with parents organizing it, so it actually happens. All she wants to do is badge work, and the events she plans (and then pushes those events on the girls) She isn't actually listening to what literally all of them have been asking for.
And finances, for some reason she likes keeping everyone in the dark. Our girls have sold a lot of cookies, but she doesn't like to inform anyone how much we have in the bank, or how much we spend on badges, or what the fiscal plan is. When parents ask about it, she says she will talk to the scouts at a meeting, but she doesn't. The treasurer just does what she says.
Help? What do we do to make this work? About half of the troop are thinking of leaving because they think this is pointless. We already lost 2 families in the last few years. The leader wont change even when we have talked to her.
My daughter loves girl scouts so I hate to pull her out, but this is driving some of the families mad.