A yard sign urging voters to vote 'Yes' on a referendum request for Madison School District in 2024 when a record number of schools went to referendum. Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.

Republican lawmakers are seeking to give military recruiters and youth organizations a boost from the state when it comes to reaching students in public schools, saying that some school districts aren’t giving the organizations equal access. Lawmakers on the Senate Education Committee considered those along with bills that would add further requirements to school referendum requests. 

“I think we have a theme here when it comes to anything that seems patriotic in a way, we’re having a little bit of struggles getting into particular schools,” Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) said during a Tuesday Senate Education Committee meeting. She said during the hearing that she feels “discouraged” about the way military recruiters and scouts are viewed by “certain” communities in Wisconsin. 

One bill — SB 10 — would specifically require schools to allow military recruiters access to common areas in high schools and to allow access during the school day and during school-sanctioned events. It wouldn’t require districts to give recruiters access to classrooms during instructional time.

Federal law has mandated since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act during the Bush administration that public schools give military access to students at school and to students’ contact information. Families can opt their children out of the release of information. However, Cabral-Guevara said she has heard complaints that recruiters have had difficulty. 

Cabral-Guevara said she has heard of recruiters being placed in rooms separate from employment recruiters and has also heard of a limit being placed on the number of times a recruiter can visit a school as well as visits to drop off documents being counted as a recruiting visit. She said recruiters said they have the most difficulty with access to Madison and Milwaukee schools.

“There should be no reason why a military recruiter should have restricted access or be placed at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to speaking with students,” Cabral-Guevara said. 

The bill comes as the U.S. military, including the Wisconsin Army National Guard, in recent years has struggled to reach recruitment goals.

“They have not said they have been denied access to enter the building, what they have been saying is that… they have been prohibited from doing meaningful recruitment,” Cabral-Guevara said. 

Bill co-author Rep. William Penterman (R-Hustisford) compared military recruiters to students trying to sell chocolate bars to their peers.

“After school and during lunch, they have a table in the commons where they sell those candy bars. It’s in a public space, it’s in a common area. Now, I can only imagine if they were restricted to, perhaps inside the counselor’s office, or in a back room somewhere, how that would negatively impact their sales of chocolate bars,” Penterman said.

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said that school officials in his district had some concerns about whether the bill would lead to excessive access to schools, especially as they already provide access. He said the bill “seems like it’s opening it up to infinite” access. He noted that there are a lot of different groups that seek access to schools. 

“They try and button it and say, OK, we have career fairs and they have to make that balance to try and figure that out,” Larson said. “I think [limitations] would have to be written in, and not just assumed, because if there’s a military recruiter who’s just like, OK every Tuesday, we’re gonna pop in and we’re just going to run the rotation.’ There’s nothing that would stop them if this legislation were passed.”

Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) said the bill seems “problematic” because of a lack of boundaries.

“It says, ‘during school sanctioned events’ — that could be a ball game, that could be during mock trial, that could be during prom… there’s just no boundaries around it with this bill,” Keyeski said. 

Cabral-Guevara said that she is not seeking “to change federal code on how many times they can access a building” or give military recruiters more access than others. Rather, she said she wants to ensure that when recruiters are in a school building for what is counted as a recruiting visit, it is a meaningful interaction.

“That’s not what it says in the bill though,” Keyeski responded. 

The committee also considered SB 11 that would similarly require that if a “federally chartered youth” organization — particularly the Girl Scouts or Eagle Scouts — requests access to a public school that a principal allow them to provide oral or written information to students to help encourage participation in the organizations. The bill is co-authored by Cabral-Guevara and Rep. Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc). 

“In essence, what we’re finding is that there again are certain groups that when they look for access for recruitment purposes, they are maybe put in a different room. They are not allowed the same access that other organizations get,” Cabral-Guevara said. “As a mother of four children who all worked at scout camps, as somebody that’s active amongst the world of scouting, it is amazing what these organizations help produce in these children. You’re looking at amazing leadership skills. You’re looking at outstanding community volunteers.” 

A similar bill passed the Legislature last session, but was vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers. He wrote in his veto message that he objects to “undermining local decision-making regarding whether organizations may visit school buildings to recruit students for memberships” and said the bill might conflict with federal law.

Keyeski said she heard from a local school leader that the bill appears focused on the wrong priorities. 

“One of the superintendents in my district said the bill does not address any of the things I’m worried about, and then he said that about every single one of these bills,” Keyeski said, adding that she asked what he meant. “He said, ‘We need funding, we need better school opportunities for technological advances.’ This was just not a concern.”

Proposed referendum requirements

Lawmakers on the committee also considered two bills that would impose new restrictions on school referendum requests, which districts have increasingly relied on to help meet costs. 

One bill — SB 58 — would require ballots to include a “good faith estimate” of the property tax impact for a referendum. Ballot questions are currently required to include the dollar amount of the increase in the levy limit.

“It is not the intent of this bill to sway people one way or another on any particular referendum. The point is simply to ensure that voters are given the information that they need so that their decision is informed,” bill coauthor Rep. Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) said. 

The other bill — SB 81 — would eliminate referendum questions that allow recurring — or permanent — operational funding increases and would limit “nonrecurring” referendum requests to cover no more than a four-year period.

“There’s really no mechanism to say we need to make sure that whoever, sometime down the road, is actually having to pay the bill and also who’s responsible for spending the money — if they’re completely different people, there should be a mechanism where both sides have to come back to the table and say, “Let’s relook at everything,” Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) said.

Keyeski said that she thought the mechanism for ensuring that referendum requests are considered responsibly is the elected officials and voters who decide whether to approve them. 

“It’s just taking away local control and it’s taking away democracy in action,” Keyeski said. 

School district leaders and representatives of school associations expressed an array of concerns about the bills, saying the ballot requirements could create confusion for voters and that further restrictions on referendum requests could increase the financial challenges school districts face.

Dee Pattack, executive director of the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance, told lawmakers that school districts do not want to go to referendum and said that some of the requirements in the  bill would be difficult to meet.

The “good faith estimate piece, that would be really challenging,” Pattack said, noting that there is market volatility that could affect total debt referenda costs. She also said that trying to include all of that information on a ballot could be confusing. 

School districts seeking a referendum will often have a webpage dedicated to information about the request, will host meetings with local residents and stakeholders, speak with news outlets to spread the word and take other actions to ensure the public knows the purpose of a referendum and the costs. 

“It’s a long process, and we just think that, you know, we try to be as transparent as possible right now and trying to condense that into a small area on a ballot might not really be the best way to enhance that transparency,” Pattack said.

Cathy Olig, executive director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Schools Alliance, told lawmakers that school staff and local taxpayers are suffering from referendum fatigue. There were 94 referendum requests during February and April 2025, with about a third of those representing “retry” efforts, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. Voters approved 53 of those for a passage rate of 56.4%, making 2025 one of the lowest referendum passage rates in a non-presidential or midterm election year since 2011. 

“We’re concerned [SB 81] will create a constant cycle of referenda for school districts. We would welcome alternatives to referenda, which could be addressed through the budget, but to add further requirements and costs takes the focus away from finding solutions to the larger problems plaguing the school finance formula,” Olig said.

Kenosha Unified School District Superintendent Jeffrey Weiss told lawmakers that his district has  closed several schools in recent years, including five elementary schools and a middle school. He said the change involved a lot of redistricting of students. He said the district has also cut 200 positions and more than $1 million of staff out of the district office.

“We are very responsible stewards of public funds… We wanted to do all we could to avoid having to go for an operational referendum,” Weiss said, adding that superintendents don’t want to go to referendum. The district’s $115 million request failed in February.

Weiss said he thought transparency was already part of the referendum process because the community holds school districts accountable.

“I think these bills around referendum questions are really treating a symptom,” Weiss said, noting that a Blue Ribbon Commission proposed actions in 2019 that could address the problems with the state’s school funding system. “That is the cure and the conversations that we’re having right now, we’re talking about the symptoms. I don’t want to lose my ability to go to the community. This really is our only lever. There are not another seven schools in the city of Kenosha that I can close.”

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