This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/wisconsin-scouts-suddenly-running-into-closed-school-doors/

Evers’ veto unfortunately is in line with rising trend of schools refusing traditional short recruiting talks

It used to be, said Lucia Cronin, that a parent leading the local Cub Scouts would call the school principal. They’d set up a date to come in during recess or at the end of lunch one day and give a short pitch to kids about fun and friends and campfires. 

“I gave many a talk like this myself,” said Cronin, whose 29 years of involvement with Scouting began with her being a den mother for her kids and led to her being the chair of the support structure that helps Cub Scout packs in Wisconsin, Illinois and the U.P. pull off the Pinewood Derby without a hitch. 

“The principal would welcome us with open arms,” she said, and all it involved was five minutes a year of noninstructional time. “Easy-peasy,” she said. “And that’s the way it worked across the state of Wisconsin.” 

Now? Over the past six or seven years — other Scout leaders told me it’s been maybe a decade — the doors have been closing. Hundreds of schools, say Scout leaders, refuse even those five minutes. Not all, certainly, but “There’s been a fairly significant reduction in the ability to contact families through the schools,” said Joe Carlson, who leads the Boy Scouts council in La Crosse and nearby counties. Deb Schemenauer, who heads a Girl Scouts council based in Sheboygan, estimates a third of schools refuse.

This doesn’t seem to be just an issue in Wisconsin. Some other states — West Virginia last month, Florida this — passed legislative remedies. Lawmakers in Wisconsin did, too, passing SB 549 by voice votes in February. 

The bill, short and simple, requires public schools to offer an opportunity, one time once a year, to the representatives of the five youth groups chartered in federal law to speak to students about what they offer. The groups are the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the Future Farmers of America, the Boys and Girls Clubs, and Big Brothers Big Sisters, though everyone who showed up to testify in favor of the bill was with Scouting, because that’s who organizes through school talks. 

The hearing record shows 17 people speaking in favor of the bill. No one testified against. 

Yet in late March, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the bill for reasons that don’t make sense, citing “local decision-making” and a 1984 federal law on equal access to schools that apparently worried no school principal as recently as a decade ago. The claim, which Cronin and others said sometimes is echoed by school authorities, is that if a principal lets the Girl Scouts come and talk, they’ll have to let everyone show up. 

If inexplicable, it doesn’t sound like the veto was wholly a surprise. Cronin recounts meeting, along with staffers for one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Fox Crossing), with staff at the state Department of Public Instruction, which Evers headed for a decade and which he remains close to. The DPI told the group it opposes mandates (other than the shelf-full of mandates it imposes). Attempts to meet with organizations representing school administrators were rebuffed, said Cronin: “They stonewalled us.”

So, while den mothers go on knocking on school doors, asking politely, the answer increasingly is no. Germantown’s schools permitted in-person talks in 2022, Cronin testified in January, and those talks attracted 106 new Scouts. Germantown refused in 2023, and only 20 new Scouts joined. 

The Badger Institute sought comment from the school district but heard no reply by deadline.

Schemenauer said, “It makes it really difficult to open the door to Girl Scouts,” not being able to talk in person about an experience that is intrinsically in-person. Going camping with friends isn’t done virtually. 

That’s why it’s unfortunate that school doors are closing now, just as it’s becoming clear how much anomie is inflicted on children by smartphones. “Anything we can do to get them off their screens and doing some things that are good for their community is a wonderful partnership for schools,” said Schemenauer. 

Interestingly, just about the time he vetoed the Scouts bill, Evers signed a bill to require Wisconsin schools to teach lessons on Asian-American and Hmong history. That’s in addition to existing requirements for lessons on African-American, Hispanic and American Indian history. All are valuable topics, but each such mandate pre-empts on local decision-making, and each takes up more of a school’s instructional time than does a five-minute talk from the Girl Scouts. It certainly is at odds with Evers’ veto message. 

Cronin has hopes that Evers will change his mind. She cites how he spends time annually meeting with kids who achieve the rarified Eagle Scout rank, talking with them at length. 

And what of the dodgy claim that if the school lets in federally chartered groups, it has to let in anyone, that it can’t distinguish one from another? Schemenauer, sensibly, notes that school administrators face many pressures, “and they sometimes react by not making a decision about what’s really best for kids.” 

Perhaps. But if Wisconsin families ever needed adults in authority to show some grit by standing up for century-old institutions with proven records of helping children grow into happy adults, now is the time.

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.

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