This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/scouts-hope-gov-evers-will-have-change-of-heart-on-school-access/

Bill sailed through both chambers last year

Scouting leaders say they’re hoping that legislation granting them a few minutes for a recruiting talk at the start of Wisconsin public schools’ academic year is more successful this time around.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Fox Crossing), is the same as last year’s, although the Assembly version has a new lead sponsor, Rep. Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc).

Last year, the measure sailed through both chambers on voice votes until it ran into a veto by Gov. Tony Evers. Will things come out differently?

“Who knows?” said Lucia Cronin, a 30-year volunteer who chairs the support structure for Scouting America councils in Wisconsin, Illinois and the Upper Peninsula. “Scouting America” is the name of what used to be the Boy Scouts of America.

The bill would require the principal of a public school — district or charter — to find a date and time around the beginning of the school year for a Scouting representative to provide children information on how to join. It does the same for a handful of other federally chartered youth groups, such as Girl Scouts, FFA and 4H.

Scouting leaders had been doing such visits for years, said Andrew Hardin, who heads the Scouting organization in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties. It takes “no more than five minutes,” he said, and usually amounts to a Cub Scout pack leader telling children what Scouts do, and passing out fliers so parents know how their kids can join.

But schools began refusing any such recruiting talks, and “it really has accelerated in the past five years,” said Hardin, with schools not easing up restrictions that were put in place after reopening from COVID-era lockdowns.

This past fall’s recruiting season “was more challenging than ever,” he said.

When Evers vetoed the last session’s bill, he complained the bill “strips” from superintendents and principals the “decision-making authority to determine permissible entry” to schools, and he went on to claim that it “may run afoul of the right of other groups” not chartered in federal statute to make a pitch to children.

This latter concern mirrored comments from lobbying groups connected with school administration. The Wisconsin Association of School Boards, the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, and groups representing school district business managers and human resources directors complained that it was “unclear” how the requirement would interact with federal law from the 1980s on groups’ access to schools.

Cronin, however, notes that this didn’t seem to be a concern as recently as just before the pandemic: A few minutes of noninstructional time to talk up the Cub Scouts was a given in most schools. Now, “often, outright, the answer is, ‘No, we allow no external groups to come in.’”

Neither Cronin nor Hardin speculates on why the change in attitude.

There had been incidents of school districts several decades ago barring the Boy Scouts because of its stance on homosexuality; the Madison Common Council barred some funding for Scouting groups in 2004 on that basis. In response, a federal law two decades ago prohibited schools from barring the Scouts if other groups were admitted to schools. And Scouting has since changed its stance, calming the organization’s status as a cultural trigger for progressives.

Hardin doesn’t see those old battles as playing into the recent surge in closed doors: “I think our reputation among school leaders is very strong,” he said. Cronin, too, said that administrators seem to regard Scouting as an important part of character formation. “They have a very favorable opinion,” she said.

Parents, too, she said, seem to see Scouting as good for children, “once they learn what we do and how we do it,” but the recent trend toward excluding Scout recruiting interrupts a key pathway for reaching parents. Schools are the principal way children are organized, said Cronin, which is why when she was recruiting potential Cub Scouts, “I was always friends with the kindergarten teacher, and with the PTA and with the school secretary.”

Parents may think well of Scouting in the abstract, she said, but without a flier about the date and place of a join-the-pack organizing event, families don’t know the specifics of how to sign up. With school visits, said Cronin, “We’re not persuading” so much as showing where the doorway into the Scouting experience can be found.

If the bill passes into law, Wisconsin would join more than a half-dozen states with similar measures that, unlike the federal law prohibiting schools from discriminating against Scouting and other such federally chartered youth groups, affirmatively grant them access. Indiana was among the most recent to pass one, in 2020, and Florida did so in 2024.

The Wisconsin measures each have been assigned to the education committees of the Assembly and the Senate; no hearings have yet been held.

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute.

Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.

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