Policy committee keeps current high-school cell-phone rules and asks principals to convene stakeholder group

The Board of Education Policy Committee on Sept. 9 voted to keep the district's existing high-school cell-phone policy in place for the remainder of the school year and asked high-school principals to convene stakeholder groups (students, parents, teachers, administrators and at least one board member) to review the policy for possible future changes.

Ms. Latour, a central office staff member, told the committee she had spoken with both high-school principals, who supported forming a stakeholder group to examine whether the district should make the high-school policy more restrictive and to report recommendations back to the policy committee. The committee's affirmative vote included language that the policy would remain unchanged unless the state enacted new legislation requiring a change.

The current written policy (last revised Feb. 2019) requires kindergarten through grade 8 students to keep phones off and not visible during the school day. At the high-school level the policy allows phones to be silenced and not visible with limited exceptions for lunch and certain noninstructional times; staff said principals reported routine enforcement efforts including classroom phone caddies, teacher monitoring, and administrator presence in halls and cafeterias.

Committee members discussed a vendor product often described as "Yonder pouches" during the meeting. Several board members raised cost concerns: one member said the pouch program was estimated at about $88,000 districtwide and compared that expense to teacher salaries. Others noted possible enforcement/workload trade-offs for teachers and the risk that students could find workarounds. Several trustees said they supported a stakeholder review so the committee could consider a range of options (policy changes without pouches, pilot programs, grant-funded purchases) rather than adopting an expensive hardware solution immediately.

The committee motion to retain the current policy for the school year and to request principals convene focused stakeholder discussions passed by unanimous vote. Staff said any recommendations resulting from the stakeholder group would return to policy for consideration for implementation in the following school year.