AMLTexas 2024 Boys State
June 09th-14th, 2024
UT Austin
Texas Boys State 2024


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E-Mail from Alex Rose, rcvd: 20240110 1:14 P.M. CST

NOTE: This email is to 2023 Posts, Post Commanders, and Post Adjutants. Thank you for your grace and patience if you've already received a similar version as we try to support Posts statewide. If you have an Americanism/Boys State POC, please forward this email to them as well. Finally, if your Post already has a strong and vibrant program sending dozens of Statesmen every year, please feel free to disregard this email and keep doing great things.

Howdy fellow Legionnaires,

My name is Alex Rose and I am volunteering with our American Legion Texas Boys State Program. I'm also an active-duty US Army Captain, law student at SMU, Texas A&M Former Student, and a former Boys Statesman myself. I've been a proud member of the Legion and Post 159 in Bryan since commissioning and while overseas.

TXBS is a once-in-a-lifetime leadership capstone experience for rockstar Juniors from June 9-14, 2024. While at UT Austin, they learn to lead alongside over 1,000 of their best and brightest peers from across Texas. We welcome Statesmen from public, private, charter, and home-school backgrounds. Our goal is for boys' only constraint to be merit, not finances or bureaucracy. I truly believe in our mission to make good Americans better at a formative time in their lives. To maximize the Legion' impact in these boys' lives, we need your help!

We need your sponsorship of rockstar Juniors from local public, private, charter, and homeschools!
Our rule of thumb for nominations is generally the holistic Top 5% of a school's eligible male Juniors, but this is flexible. We are working with the University of Texas to accommodate up to 1,200 Statesmen. This is the only opportunity that current Juniors will have to attend so think big! Our 75+ years of battle-tested experiential learning in consensus-building, civil discourse, and servant leadership across difference may be needed more now than ever before. Please see our attached updated materials for TXBS 2024 for widest dissemination.

Who are the Ideal Statesmen?

We hope schools will nominate and you will sponsor their best and brightest leaders in student government, athletics, NHS, political activism, theatre, JROTC, band, or those who show unique potential. These are the boys with strong interpersonal, oratorical, and academic skills who serve as leaders by example at their school. While TXBS is for male students to attend between their Junior and Senior years, Texas Bluebonnet Girl's State offers an outstanding experience for young women leaders as well. Their program can be reached here: girlsstate@alatexas.org

The Process

First, please doggedly reach out to your local public, private, and charter schools. Our team is glad to support, but your efforts to reach out will always be more effective because you're a neighbor and community leader. It may take multiple emails/calls to different busy educators before one engages. But one is all we need to open TXBS to a whole new school.

Second, encourage schools to canvass their current Juniors to find available and interested candidates that they believe will excel amongst their peers at TXBS. Schools (administrators, counselors, teachers, and coaches) should their rockstars! The number of nominees is usually no more than 5-10% of eligible male junior enrollment, but this is flexible. For example, a school with an enrollment of 400 (50 male Juniors) may only have 1-2. But a massive HS with 300, 500, or 1,000 male Juniors can and should have many more nominees. We recommend schools canvass and select nominees in January.

Third, ask nominators to have their schools' nominees to apply online with your information as the Legion Sponsor in Section V. We recommend this be in January and February.

Fourth, please conduct your confirmatory interviews to sponsor student-leaders. While we are seeking rockstars, remember that this will be the only opportunity to attend and will likely be these boys' first and strongest impressions of the American Legion as it was for me many years ago. Please seek to minimize all financial barriers to entry such as transportation, T-shirts, etc if possible.
If your Post is looking to expand your sponsorship to new schools or more students (or hopefully both) but would need scholarship funding to do so, please reach out to me.
We seek to let all deserving and meritorious students access this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity regardless of family poverty or Post budget constraints. This is usually in February, March, and April.

NOTE: In the rare cases where a student-leader has applied and subsequently fails their Legion interview, please let me know so we can remove them.

In Conclusion

Thank you for all you've done for our country, communities, and Legion Posts. If y'all are a Post with a strong and vibrant TXBS sponsorship program, please know that I appreciate you and am not asking you to fix anything that isn't broken. Keep doing great things! If y'all are a Post who would like to work together to build up your TXBS sponsorship program, I am always happy to help. If you or any of your Legionnaires are interested in serving as Staff for TXBS 2024, please contact me or Drew Vick (CC'd).

Please feel free to forward these attachments and my information to any teachers, coaches, administrators, counselors, or other educators who may be interested in nominating students.

I look forward to hearing from you and am happy to help in any way that I can.

Have a wonderful day,

-Alex

Alexander L. Rose
Outreach Coordinator, Texas Boys State 2024
Post 159 | American Legion Department of Texas
Dedman School of Law | Southern Methodist University
214.226.2481 (Text) |  alrose@smu.edu

Email From: Alexander L. Rose: rcvd: 202401051121 CST

Howdy my fellow Legionnaires,

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and a Merry Christmas. My name is Alex Rose and I am volunteering with our American Legion Texas Boys State Program. I'm also an active-duty US Army Captain, law student at SMU, Texas A&M Former Student, and a former Boys Statesman myself. I've been a proud member of the Legion and Post 159 in Bryan since commissioning and while overseas.

As many of you know, TXBS is a once-in-a-lifetime leadership capstone experience for rockstar Juniors from June 9-14, 2024. While at UT Austin, they learn to lead alongside over 1,000 of their best and brightest peers from across Texas. We welcome Statesmen from public, private, charter, and home-school backgrounds. Our goal is for boys' only constraint to be merit, not finances or bureaucracy. I truly believe in our mission to make good Americans better at a formative time in their lives. To maximize the Legion's impact in these boys' lives, we need your help!

We need your sponsorship of rockstar Juniors from local schools! Our rule of thumb for nominations is generally the holistic Top 5% of a school's eligible male Juniors, but this is flexible. We are working with the University of Texas to accommodate up to 1,200 Statesmen. This is the only opportunity that current Juniors will have to attend. Our 75+ years of battle-tested experiential learning in consensus-building, civil discourse, and servant leadership across difference may be needed more now than ever before. Please see our attached updated materials for TXBS 2024 for widest dissemination.

Who are the Ideal Statesmen?

We hope schools will nominate and you will sponsor their best and brightest leaders in student government, athletics, NHS, political activism, theatre, JROTC, band, or those who show unique potential. These are the boys with strong interpersonal, oratorical, and academic skills who serve as leaders by example at their school. While TXBS is for male students to attend between their Junior and Senior years, Texas Bluebonnet Girls State offers an outstanding experience for young women leaders as well. Their program can be reached here: girlsstate@alatexas.org

The Process

First, please doggedly reach out to your local public, private, and charter schools. Our team is glad to support, but your efforts to reach out will always be more effective because you're a neighbor and community leader. It may take multiple emails/calls to different busy educators before one engages. But one is all we need to open TXBS to a whole new school.

Second, encourage schools to canvass their current Juniors to find available and interested candidates that they believe will excel amongst their peers at TXBS. Schools (administrators, counselors, teachers, and coaches) should their rockstars! The number of nominees is usually no more than 5-10% of eligible male junior enrollment, but this is flexible. For example, a school with an enrollment of 400 (50 male Juniors) may only have 1-2. But a massive HS with 300, 500, or 1,000 male Juniors can and should have many more nominees. We recommend schools canvass and select nominees in January.

Third, ask nominators to have their schools' nominees to apply online with your information as the Legion Sponsor in Section V. We recommend this be in January and February.

Fourth, please conduct your confirmatory interviews to sponsor student-leaders. While we are seeking rockstars, remember that this will be the only opportunity to attend and will likely be these boys&apos first and strongest impressions of the American Legion as it was for me many years ago. Please seek to minimize all financial barriers to entry such as transportation, T-shirts, etc if possible. If your Post is looking to expand your sponsorship to new schools or more students (or hopefully both) but would need scholarship funding to do so, please reach out to me. We seek to let all deserving and meritorious students access this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity regardless of family poverty or Post budget constraints. This is usually in February, March, and April.

NOTE: In the rare cases where a student-leader has applied and subsequently fails their Legion interview, please let me know so we can remove them.

In Conclusion

Thank you for all you've done for our country, communities, and Legion Posts. If y'all are a Post with a strong and vibrant TXBS sponsorship program, please know that I appreciate you and am not asking you to fix anything that isn't broken. Keep doing great things! If y'all are a Post who would like to work together to build up your TXBS sponsorship program, I am always happy to help.

Please feel free to forward these attachments and my information to any teachers, coaches, administrators, counselors, or other educators who may be interested in nominating students.

I look forward to hearing from you and am happy to help in any way that I can.

Have a wonderful day,
-Alex

Alexander L. Rose
Outreach Coordinator, Texas Boys State 2024
Post 159 | American Legion Department of Texas
Dedman School of Law | Southern Methodist University
214.226.2481 (Text) | alrose@smu.edu

Attachments to this emailed update


Email rcvd Larry Miller, Post-TX0572


(325)-718-8661
lpmiller668@yahoo.com
DISTRICT-21 BOYS STATE & GIRLS TEXAS BLUEBONNET STATE 

   Dear comrades, 
   My name is Larry Miller, member of Legion Post 572 in San Angelo.
   District Commander Jeff Meurer asked if I would act as the district's focal point for both 
     Texas Boys State and Texas Bluebonnet Girls State. 
   Periodically I will be sending you information and updates to the programs.
   If you have questions or need information on the program, don't hesitate to contact me 
    via this email address or call me direct at (325) 718-8661.  
   Look forward to working with all of you to make this a very successful year for 
     Texas Boys State and Texas Bluebonnet Girls State.  Until later, Merry Christmas to all!
   At-Large Member, American Legion Smith-Bryant Post 572 San Angelo, Texas
  

   From: Chairman Texas Boys State 
   Date: Sun, Dec 3, 2023 at 10:54 AM
   Subject: Update #3 | 2024 Texas Boys State | 03 DEC 2023

Legion;

We hope everyone is super as we close out year 2023.
For your further sharing, as you see fit, please see Update #3 for your TXBS 2024 below
. . .in no particular order:

Communications:

We were excited to have had 118 of you sign up to receive these updates for 2024!

In addition to those who opted-in, we include:


We defer to Commanders/hubmasters to further share/distribute these updates, if desired.
Thank you, always, for what you do at the Posts & locally,   always the key to finding the very best talent!

Our dates of 9-14 June 2024 are confirmed with UT Austin for our program.

1 May 2024 is our registration deadline, please.
  Thank you for planning forward to help us here.
  The logistics complexity, UT requirements, and all sorts of new factors to execute this program seem to multiply every year.

A few notes from the 2023 National Boys State Director's Conference:

Please see the attached(bottom of page) flyer used in recruiting efforts into areas of Texas where there is no TXBS representation (you are free to use if helpful).
Our 2024 Brochure and Fact sheet are being revised, along with the website. We will report to you when all is fully updated.

As you are likely well aware, there is a refreshed American Legion logo.
We are required and working to now integrate the logo into our Texas Boys State paraphernalia.
While in transition, we will (of course) use the shirts we already have in inventory, in addition to ordering shirts that will incorporate the new logo (design TBD).
It is possible your 2024 Statesmen will have some combination of old logo and new logo shirts while we make the shift.
Legion Brand link: Brand Mark Information

Save the date now!   Legion Day 2024.

Friday, 14 June 2024.

We would love as many "Legion Hats" to represent us to the expected 1800+ people we'll touch that day.
More to follow next year.

Thank you to our Sons of the American Legion who have kindly offered their assistance this year with some important initiatives.
So grateful!
More info later.

Our goal remains to have 1,000 Statesmen this year (this is also our planning factor on the budget).
So, thank you for doing everything in your power to help.

In addition to your local efforts, we have had a dedicated team working to maximize viz of your program.
Huge thank you to Lucas Turner and Alex Rose for sending over 2,000 emails in the last few weeks to schools where there has been zero TXBS representation!
Last year, we had 20 Statesmen from schools that sent Statemen for the first time ever. We are looking to hit at least 90 this year of entirely new schools (including from underrepresented areas).
We cannot express enough our thanks for the volunteer efforts of the people that bleed into this program, in addition to their normal work and family lives . . . like Lucas and Alex.

As always, prior email updates 1 and 2 are attached below as PDF (attachment #2).
Please let us know of anything you need.

Wishing everyone the best as we head in to 2024!

Sincerely;

Your TXBS Executive Committee
Casey Z. Thomas
Chairman | American Legion Texas Boys State
chairman@texasboysstate.com
http://www.texasboysstate.com

Attachements: rcvd via fwdd Emails with above:

amltxdistrict21@gmail.com       hubtech_2024:Dennis Fedak