Teacher praises new phone policy, urges board to 'Talk to Your Teachers, Please'

Miss Horn, a teacher with Charlottesville City Schools, told the Charlottesville City School Board on March 6 that the district's recently implemented phone policy has been a “game changer” in classrooms and urged the board to prioritize teacher insight over educational apps and standardized-test data.

Horn spoke during the public-comment period at the board's 5 p.m. meeting and singled out what she called the division's “new phone policy,” praise for CSAs and a push for the initiative she named “TTYTP — Talk to your teachers, please.” “It is a game changer. Kids are talking and joking and laughing, and it's wonderful,” Horn said of the phone policy. She added, “They do not get nearly enough credit. They are amazing humans who love our kids, who bond with our kids, and I think they deserve so much praise and credit,” referring to CSAs.

Why it matters: Horn framed her remarks as a call for the school division to heed the on-the-ground knowledge of experienced classroom teachers when shaping policy. “Why are educational apps, strangers who write books, and the data from standardized tests... more valued than the insights of the hundreds of teachers working every day in Charlottesville City classrooms?” she asked. Horn said she has raised the question repeatedly over her 17 years with the division and described shifting to a screen-free classroom as a positive change for her students.

In her comments, Horn said she wanted to discuss the changes with district policymakers but had not yet been contacted: “I spoke about this a couple of months ago, and I'd still love to talk about it with folks who are making policy. So far, no one has hit me up.” She also invoked the shorthand “TTYTP” and asked the board directly to engage teachers when considering curriculum, classroom practices and the use of instructional technology.

The remarks were part of the public-comment portion of the meeting; the board did not take formal action on Horn's comments during that period as recorded in the meeting transcript. The transcript included other procedural business earlier in the meeting (roll call and approval of the agenda), but no board response or vote tied to Horn's requests appears in the provided excerpt.