Boy Scouts Proposed Regulations Comments

[fgoodwin]

Paige Proposes Regulations to Enforce Boy Scouts of America Act

 

The U.S. Department of Education is seeking public comment on proposed regulations that guarantee equal access to public school facilities for the Boy Scouts of America and other patriotic youth groups, Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced today.

 

"The goal of these regulations is to ensure that the Boy Scouts and other patriotic youth groups have equal access to public facilities, and today's action is another step toward achieving this goal," Secretary Paige said.

 

http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2004/10/10132004.html

 

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Here is a weblink to submit comments via an online form if you don't want your email address to become a matter of public record:

 

http://comments.regulations.gov//external/Comments.cfm?docketId=04%2D23290

 

If the above URL wraps, try this:

http://tinyurl.com/4fchq

 

I don't know if access to local schools has been an issue in your area, but it is an issue in other parts of the country. Whether you support or oppose access to public schools by the Boy Scouts, please read the proposed rules and submit your comments.

 

This is participatory democracy at work!

 

Fred Goodwin

ACM, Pack 2003

Alamo Area Council

[acco40]

I think it stinks. Why would the government get involved in this kind of legislation for a private organization? If the BSA can't stand on its own merits, maybe they should change.

 

What about the Sons of the Confederacy? Daughters of the Revolution? Descendants of the Mayflower? What is a patriotic organization? This type of legislation is rife with problems.

[scoutldr]

In this city, if I want to use a school for a Scouting function, all I have to do is fill out a form and have it approved by the building Principal, and the Superintendant's office. So far, if the space has not already been claimed by another group, I have had no problem. Schools throughout the city are being used by Packs, Troops, Dens, Training, Roundtables, etc. It's free of charge unless it's on a weekend, then there's a fee for the custodian to be there. In some schools, the cafeteria is a church on Sunday mornings. The taxpayer funded buildings are there for the public's use...including Scouts.

[Proud Eagle]

This has nothing to do with the quality of the program. If that was the only issue then the BSA would have stood on its own merits just fine.

 

Instead this has everything to do with politics. You see, some school systems found it politicly advantageous to exclude the Scouts. Some claimed it was because of the aethists. Others because of the homosexuals. Still others claimed that the BSA was not entitled to use the facilities since it was not a school based program. There were a great many excuses for this put forward.

 

In other cases the schools demanded that the BSA pay outrageous fees that neither school clubs, nor other community groups were forced to pay.

 

All of this was done in the name of politics and political correctness.

 

So, the only solution was for the politicians to find a solution within the political frame work. The answer was to pass a law saying that schools that recieve federal funding can not keep the BSA out.

[NJCubScouter]

A cynic might suggest that it could be be considered political pandering for the current administration to come out with these proposed regulations three weeks before the presidential election. (I realize the election is next week, but the date on the linked article is October 13, 2004.) Especially considering that the purpose of the regulations is to enforce a statute that was signed into law in January 2002. In other words, after making a big show of supporting the Boy Scouts, the administration left the statute sitting there with no enforcement mechanism for almost three years (33 months to be more precise), until it could make another big show of supporting the Boy Scouts right before the election.

 

Now, in order to make sure that I (oops, I mean, a hypothetical cynic) was being fair, I looked at the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for this regulation (which you can get to from the link above) to see if, perhaps, the regulations are so lengthy and complicated that they really would take somewhere close to 33 months to write. Well, I don't think so. The document (which includes the entire regulation, as well as explanatory material) is eight pages long -- and the first page is a cover sheet, and in scrolling through it, it looked like at least 2 full pages are standard boilerplate language copied from other regulations, so there are maybe 5 pages of actual original material there. It took them 33 months to write 5 pages? Being generous, allowing for a very meticulous writing process, a LOT of proofreading and numerous coffee breaks -- these are, after all, federal government employees -- plus reviewing and editing by 10 or 11 levels of bureacracy, I would have given it, say, 6 months, tops. (Considering that I myself wrote about 12 pages of stuff today at work, I'd say 6 months for 5 pages is giving them the benefit of the doubt.)

 

Unless, of course, the goal was to come out with this right before the election. Of course, that is what a cynic might suggest. It's a good thing I'm not one of those.

[Proud Eagle]

Considering this is getting absolutely no play in the press, and that there seems to be no attempt to use this in campaign speeches or ads, I would say this is not some sort of political trick. If this was some big political thing, there would have at least been a major press conference by the Secretary of Education, which I don't seem to remember hearing anything about. Plus, no one can really claim that they have done anything about this, since these roles are not yet in force. The only people that can possibly score points off this are in Congress, and they certainly have no interest in the story about the rules coming up, since it only shows how little they are actually capable of.

 

I think there is a far more plausible explanation.

 

This was part of the No Child Left Behind Act. That was the largest single set of changes to public education since the 1960s.

 

Obviously, that required writing and rewriting a great many rules and regulations. I would have to guess those sections dealing directly with education, such as those on testing standards, were probably revued and the necessary rules written first. After all, testing under this law has already happened. So, this section was probably near the end of the list.

 

Now, to compound this problem, the Department of Education isn't really one of the better prepared departments for writing rules and regulations. The EPA or DOJ, now they have many lawyers that do nothing but write and rewrite rules and regulations for the ever changing laws they deal with. Department of Education on the other hand probably doesn't have nearly so many lawyers, nor as much experience with issueing rules and regulations related to major overhauls of its area of responsibility.

[Bob White]

Actually this rule has been in the works for nearly two years. As far as its proximity to the election, what do we do, shut down every step of the legislative process for 2 months prior to any election so that nobody can call foul?

 

As any lawyer will tell you this isn't a new rule it modifies an existing law. Also if you read the document (and this is still in a very early stage of development) you will see that it pertains to far more than the programs of the BSA.

 

In general it ties government funding of public facilities to equal access to all organizations regardless of how the management of the facility "feels" about that organization. This is already a law, but what this modification does is tie the funding to obeying the rules. It further requires that access be granted at fees equal to the lowest fee charged to any other organization. This protects the Scouts and other organizations from being unfairly charged for the same facilities offered to others.

 

We pay the same taxes we have the same rights to facilities paid for by those taxes.

 

Is this political? What law isn't? Isn't barring the Scouts from these facilities political? Political problems more often than not require political solutions.

 

 

 

[fgoodwin]

ALL:

 

This is great discussion. We can debate the pros and cons of the law (and rules) all we want, but anything posted here won't really affect the outcome of the rulemaking.

 

If you really want your views to be heard, I highly suggest you post them to the Dept. of Education:

 

http://comments.regulations.gov/external/Comments.cfm?docketId=04%2D23290

 

http://tinyurl.com/4fchq

 

If you do decide to post your comments to the Dept. of Education, please be aware that the time to debate the need (or lack of need) for the law has passed.

 

So comments along the lines of "this isn't necessary" won't be very useful, because the law requires the Dept. to develop rules for enforcing the law.

 

What the Dept. is looking for is comments on how best to enforce the law. If you have concrete examples of cases where the law and rules are needed, that would be very helpful.

 

If you believe the rules go beyond what the law requires, or don't properly implement what you believe the law requires, those are the kinds of comments the Dept. needs to hear.

 

YiS,

 

Fred Goodwin

[acco40]

Sorry, double post.(This message has been edited by acco40)

[acco40]

In our area, the public school system has to provide public transportation to the private schools! If schools and other organizations want to be private organizations they should take the good with the bad.

 

"In general it ties government funding of public facilities to equal access to all organizations regardless of how the management of the facility "feels" about that organization." I don't think this is true. The legislation specifically calls out "patriotic organizations" and mentions the BSA by name. Our public school district already does this. We (Scout groups) used to be able to use their facilities for free. As a den leader, I would request, with the proper paperwork, the use of a classroom (usually my son's) for a specific night of the week. I promised to keep the room clean (no snacks was my rule and we left it cleaner than when we entered it). This was changed for all groups last year so now a $25 fee per hour is charged to all groups.

 

Is a public school building public property? Yes and no. I believe residents of that school district should have preferred access to use the facility. They school districts should have some say in who they will let use the school facilities. Non-profits, private businesses, private organizations, charities, student organizations, etc. - all should not be forced to come under the same umbrellas. Should an aerobics instructor who wants to use the gym for her high priced clients be treated the same as a Cub Scout Pack for the use of the gymnasium for 1.5 hours? I say let the school administration decide that question, not a federal law.(This message has been edited by acco40)

[KoreaScouter]

Aside from principle, I don't see what the issue is here. We can gnash our teeth all day about a public school allowing the G/L/T Student Club to meet for free in school facilities while BSA is denied that opportunity, for example. But, ultimately, a CO is required to provide a place to meet. Unless the school is the CO and they're not letting a unit meet there, this seems to be a tempest in a teapot...

 

KS

[BadenP]

HMMMMMMMM,

 

 

I wonder what Merlyn would say? I think this is much ado about nothing, it will help clarify the law to those school districts whose heads always seem buried underground. Our nation has politicized these nationally recognized youth organizations to the point that only the kids are suffering, while the adults squabble over ideology and theory. Allow access to Scouts, etc. then let the kids and parents decide who to join, not the administrators. Denying Boy Scouts access to schools just strikes me as anti-democracy in action.

[fgoodwin]

acco40 wrote:Is a public school building public property? Yes and no. I believe residents of that school district should have preferred access to use the facility. They school districts should have some say in who they will let use the school facilities. Non-profits, private businesses, private organizations, charities, student organizations, etc. - all should not be forced to come under the same umbrellas. Should an aerobics instructor who wants to use the gym for her high priced clients be treated the same as a Cub Scout Pack for the use of the gymnasium for 1.5 hours? I say let the school administration decide that question, not a federal law.I agree -- neither the Law nor the Rules require that schools give BSA the same access as a for-profit operation like an aerobics class. But the law (and the rules) do say that a school that gives access to one non-profit group, may not discriminate against the BSA (also a non-profit group), or risk losing federal funding.So as far as I can tell, the local control is still there, with one big exception: local "nondiscrimination" policies that actually are used to discriminate against the BSA are pre-empted by this law.Fred Goodwin

 

[fgoodwin]

KS wrote:Aside from principle, I don't see what the issue is here. We can gnash our teeth all day about a public school allowing the G/L/T Student Club to meet for free in school facilities while BSA is denied that opportunity, for example.The law and these rules are designed to prevent that situation.But, ultimately, a CO is required to provide a place to meet.Agreed, but that's not the issue. The issue is, that Scouts should have the same rights of access to the school (and to the kids) as any other non-profit group. It doesn't matter who the CO is. Even if the CO is a church, the Pack or Troop that wants to meet at the school should have the same right to meet there as the GLBT group you refer to above.Unless the school is the CO and they're not letting a unit meet there, this seems to be a tempest in a teapot...

But the issue is about much more than meeting space. It's about the ability to recruit, to send fliers home in the weekly folder, to put announcements in the school newsletter or on the school bulletin board.BSA's rights to do those things should be no less than any other non-profit group that is allowed to do those things in the public schools.Fred Goodwin

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

 

Fred Goodwin writes:

Agreed, but that's not the issue. The issue is, that Scouts should have the same rights of access to the school (and to the kids) as any other non-profit group. It doesn't matter who the CO is.

 

Hey Fred, do you think that a public school like Blattman Elementary can "own and operate" Pack 2003, and exclude boys who want to join who are atheists? That's your Pack. Do you see nothing illegal about a public school running a youth group that practices religious discrimination?