- November 22, 2024
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In one week, over 400 boys from Florida built their own government – establishing political parties, electing officials and reading through about 40 proposed bills.
That’s the core of American Legion Boys State, an educational program that simulates government instruction for high school students. Each delegate is chosen from a local American Legion Post after being nominated by their school.
This year’s Boys State, held June 16-22 in Tallahassee, was attended by three Seabreeze High School students: Will Reece, Isaac Baldwin and Joshua Yost.
All came back home with stories of success. Baldwin wrote one of the five bill’s the Boys State elected governor passed. Yost was elected as a senator.
And Reece was elected as Speaker of the Assembly, one of the four legislative bodies part of the mock government.
“I think probably most boys there wanted to be the governor,” Reece said. “I knew it was going to be highly unlikely that I would become the governor of Boys State, so I was just hoping I would get something — that was my goal.”
Reece has been interested in civics for a long time. History, he said, is his favorite subject at school.
“I love that in America, we have a democracy where people were able to elect their own leaders,” Reece said.
His grandparents attended Boys State and Girls State — which is sponsored by American Legion Auxiliary — when they were in high school too. Founded in 1935 in Illinois, the youth leadership program teaches participants “the rights, privileges and responsibilities of franchised citizens,” according to the Florida American Legion.
The Seabreeze High School students were delegates of American Legion Post 120 in Holly Hill, along with about 10 others from other local schools in Volusia, Flagler and Putnam County.
Reece’s mom, Laura Hill Reece, said based on her son’s desire to study political science and become an attorney, she and her husband were supportive of him attending Boys State.
Most summers, Reece, who is an Eagle Scout, works at a Boy Scout camp in North Carolina as a counselor. That took a backseat this year for Boys State.
“We all thought this would be just a pretty transformative thing for him,” Hill Reece said.
And transformative it was, Reece said.
“It truly is the best and the brightest in the state,” he said. “There are some absolutely incredible boys there. I’m glad that these boys will be the future leaders of our cities and our counties, of our state government.”
He said he learned a lot. Lost a few elections on his way to becoming speaker too.
“I think I lost six or seven elections on the first day,” Reece said. “It was a struggle.”
On the first day of Boys State, they elected fictional city officials. On the second day, the elected their county representatives and on the third day, it was all about the state elections. The boys represented two different political parties — the Nationalists and Federalists.
Reece was in the Federalist party. To become speaker, he had to take a parliamentary candidacy test.
He was not familiar with parliamentary law before attending Boys State, but he studied the sheet they were given and placed in the top five in his chamber, making him eligible to run for speaker.
“My message was unity between the parties,” Reece said. “... And it worked. I pretty easily won the Speaker of the Assembly election.”
His chamber held four legislative sessions over two days, reading more than 40 bills and passing 27. Of those 27, five were passed to the sister chamber, and were signed into law by the Boys State governor.
Including, Reece said, a bill that allowed Boys State participants to DoorDash food to their rooms at the end of the day.
Every bill that gets passed at Boys State programs around the U.S. does get introduced at the next respective state House and Senate legislative session.
The DoorDash bill probably won’t go anywhere, Reece said, but the boys did pass bills regarding a reform for boating insurance, increasing trade school funding and reducing toll road costs for veterans.
“You know the little rumble strips on the side of the interstate? That was originally a Boys Stater bill in Florida,” Reece said.
Reece got to take home the gavel after Boys State — a highlight. How many times did he use it?
“That number would be in triple digits, probably,” Reece said.
