Eagle scout rank questions

[Loowit]

My DS(16) is working on his eagle rank requirements right now.  I was looking over what he still has left to do and realized that he will need references for his application, but there are some questions I have about it.

We are not currently attending church.  We were for a while, but long drawn out story later, we no longer attend.  The youth pastor that he was fairly close to, moved away about a year ago.  I think he may give a reference if asked, but if not it would fall to me or DH.

DS is also homeschooled and has not had any outside teachers since he was in preschool.  We were part of a co-op years ago when he was in kindergarten, but he didn't have any "teachers" that would remember him and give a reference.  He has not had tutoring, classes, or anything with anyone else other than art with his grandmother (MIL).  So I am not sure who he would put for the education reference other than myself.  I don't think it looks right to put DH or I as references for parent, religious, and school, especially considering the fact that DH is the scoutmaster and I am the advancement chair.

Normally my advice would be to ask the advancement chair or eagle person in the troop, but that is me.  DS will be my 2nd scout to work through eagle since I started doing advancement several years ago.  So I guess I am hoping that someone here would have experience with this and could give me advice or tell me what you did in this situation.

One other question: has anyone here had a time when you needed to turn in an application for an alternative eagle required merit badge for a scout?  I am very much hoping to avoid this, but DS has a medical condition that my preclude him from completing one of his merit badges.  I am praying that the doctors will be able to figure out medication to help him, but if they can't he will not be able to do one of the required merit badges.  I am wondering how hard the process is.  I know it would likely be a huge embarrassment for DS to even have to go through to process as he does not like to talk about person things, especially medication conditions with others.  I am really hoping that this process would be smooth and not overly invasive into his medical problems.  I know that the BSA takes eagle requirements very seriously, so I am not sure how compassionate and considerate they will be.

[Loowit]

Thank you so much for your suggestions.  That helped a lot in giving us ideas we had never thought about.  It hadn't even come to mind about driver's ed.  I am sure his teacher would be happy to give him a reference.  He also did lego robotics in middle school, but I have no idea how to contact his former coach, and his soccer coaches were from elementary school and I don't think that would be helpful.  He doesn't work, so no work reference.

He has already completed a lot of his eagle requireds, and the rest are just a matter of him getting to work on them.  The problem one is personal fitness, which doesn't have an alternative.  He started it about a year and a half ago and did the physical part which is what he cannot do now, but he procrastinated and never got it signed off.  The merit badge counselor he was working with is no long doing it due to her poor health.  If a new merit badge counselor will sign off on his former work it won't be an issue, but it is my understanding that they do not have to and many are sticklers about stuff.  So it will come down to can we find  a merit badge counselor that will work with him on this and if not then we will need to either hope he can find a treatment that works or apply for an alternative.  He has done the work, but can't repeat it now due to a medical condition.  Poor DS is beyond frustrated about it, he loves to be active and this has been very hard on him.

[mom2scouts]

Hmmm, I haven't even thought about this. Darn, now I'm adding something else to think about to my list.