Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:25 and sunset is 5:48 for 11 hours 23 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1776, the Continental Army fortifies Dorchester Heights with cannon, leading the British troops to abandon the Siege of Boston.
There’s legislation before Gov. Evers that would ban mobile phones during the full school day (rather than only during instructional time). Baylor Spears reports on that bill:
A bill to implement a “bell-to-bell” cell phone ban in Wisconsin schools is making its way through the state Legislature, though Gov. Tony Evers hasn’t decided whether he would sign it if it makes it to his desk.
Wisconsin became the 36th state last year to implement a limit on cell phones in schools. Wisconsin Act 42, signed in 2025, requires school districts to implement policies that ban cellphones during instructional times starting in July 2026. The policies have to include exceptions for emergencies, for educational purposes and cases involving student health care, individualized education plans (IEPs) or learning environment accommodations, also known as 504 plans.
When Evers signed the law in October, he said he had a hard time deciding whether to do so because he believes in local control and wished lawmakers had taken a different approach. Nevertheless, he said he signed the bill because he was “deeply concerned” about the effect cell phones and social media are having on students.
Last week, however, Evers said he hasn’t made up his mind about the bill that would go a step further.
“That’s tough. We already, you know, did something,” Evers told reporters last week when asked if he would sign the new measure. He said it could put the state in the position of telling districts to do something that not all of them may want to do. “I have to think through that,” he added. “I’m concerned about that.”
Wisconsin school districts can already choose to implement a bell-to-bell ban under current law, but AB 948 would require policies banning cell phone use in school — prohibiting them throughout the school day, including during class time, recess, the time between classes and the lunch period. The bill requires the policies to be implemented by July 1, 2027.
See Baylor Spears, Evers says he has to think about the ‘bell-to-bell’ cell phone ban lawmakers are pushing, Wisconsin Examiner, March 4, 2026.
Evers is right to hesitate, and he’d be right to veto the bill. Local school districts should decide about a complete mobile phone ban, not the State of Wisconsin.
I’ll advance a few general principles, offered from a libertarian viewpoint. First, where legislation advances local freedom of peaceful action, that legislation should be encouraged.
Second, where legislation regulates local freedom of action, it should do so to provide minimal, uniform rules of conduct that make local freedom of action orderly. (This would be along the lines of Hayek’s observation about state planning: “Or, to express it differently, planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition but not by planning against competition.” See F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom 89 (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2 ed. 2007)).
Third, where legislation prohibits local action, there should be a weighty justification in favor of state policy over local choice.
The existing state regulations seem more than adequate; local restrictions on mobile phone use beyond them (for districts that choose to impose a bell-to-bell ban) should require a thorough justification. On this issue, that justification (however dubious) belongs in the hands of local school boards (however dubious the overall judgment of those local boards).
A deer takes the Golden Gate Bridge:
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