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Easton Middle School reports fewer disruptions after rolling out phone pouches
Summary
Easton Middle School officials told the Talbot County Board of Education that a phone-pouch program and related practices coincided with a decline in classroom disruptions, from 258 incidents in 2023–24 to 145 this year, though staff said multiple interventions are in place and causation is not claimed.
Miss Clawson, speaking for Easton Middle School, told the Talbot County Board of Education on Nov. 17 that the school has used Yonder pouches since December and is seeing fewer classroom disruptions.
From the first day of school (Aug. 25) through Nov. 12, she said, the school recorded 107 discipline referrals affecting 56 students; none were coded as electronic offenses and seven referrals “involved a phone,” she said. Clawson reported that last school year the district logged 258 disruption incidents compared with 145 so far this year — 113 fewer incidents.
"Teachers are saying kids are far more engaged in the lessons, they're not having to police the phones," Clawson said, adding that daily announcements in English and Spanish and teacher monitoring reinforce pouch use. She said some students are not perfectly locking the pouches but that phones are not being used during instruction.
The school uses progressive discipline tied to the pouches: first offense, the phone is turned in for the day; a second offense requires parent pickup; a third offense triggers a referral and placement in an alternate room called the Checkmate In; a fourth offense requires daily phone drop-off for the remainder of the quarter. Clawson said no students had reached the third offense threshold at the middle school so far.
Officials acknowledged limits on the data. "Yondr is in conjunction with a lot of the other pieces that we do at the middle school," Clawson said, and the district has introduced other practices — a house system, conscious-discipline work, restorative practices — that staff believe together have driven change. A board member asked for comparative academic data; Clawson said she has a conference call scheduled with a Yonder representative to develop academic goals and ways to track possible effects.
The board also heard operational points: medical pouches that use Velcro are available for students with health needs; damaged pouches are replaced through restitution; and the school has encountered dummy phones at the high-school level, which are treated the same as real devices. Some parents have objected in the past, and Clawson said the school enforces expectations consistently regardless of parental resistance.
The presentation included student feedback: a student advisory group reported positive experiences and said announcements and routines helped them comply. Board members asked the district to report back later in the school year with further data and implementation details for other schools.
Next steps: the district will confirm how many county schools currently use the Yonder system and will return to the board with further results and any academic tracking linked to the pouch rollout.
