Last week, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order to establish cell phone-free schools in Virginia’s K-12 public schools. The order aims to ban or severely restrict the use of cell phones during the school day citing “increasing evidence of the impact cell phone and social media usage has on education and youth mental health.” Since then, we’ve spoken with various MCPS teachers and parents who have chimed in to provide different perspectives on the topic.
A revised personal mobile device (PMD) policy was released by MCPS in September 2022, after initially being approved in May 2022. The regulation establishes procedures for possession and use of non-MCPS issued personal mobile devices that are used to send or receive data via voice, video or text, such as tablets, laptops, smart watches, tablets and cellphones by students who are on MCPS property or engaged in MCPS-sponsored activities.
The revised guidelines indicate that personal mobile devices (PMDs) may be used:
- Before and after the school day (in all grades)
- On buses. Students riding to or from school or school-sponsored activities on MCPS or chartered buses may use personal mobile devices as long as the use does not impact the safe operation of the bus and complies with MCPS regulations.
- For instructional purposes determined by the individual school (middle and high school only)
- During lunch (allowed at high school, with permission at the middle school)
- During the transition between classes (high school only and with permission)
All exceptions for school-time use allows for student learning accommodations and differentiated use by identified school-level need, determined individually by schools and to support instruction.
Below you’ll see anonymous quotes provided to us by teachers and parents that show a variety of different perspectives on the topic and how it should be handled:
Teachers:
• I use a numbered calculator pouch that students put their phone in at the beginning of class. At the end, students retrieve their phones. It works for me, but I also allow students to retrieve their phones if they complete their work early. More often than not, it’s motivation and doesn’t impact the quality of their work.
• Cell phones should be off for the entire school day. If there’s an emergency, there are many different ways schools can communicate and provide very clear instructions.
• We don’t have the backbone [to ban cell phones]. We don’t even have an attendance policy.
• A colleague at my school was involved in a situation that lasted about a month with a student’s family alleging a phone screen was cracked after it was confiscated by my colleague. After seeing that incident unfold, a lot of us have no longer have any interest in taking phones.
• There is only one policy that will work…no phones allowed in schools. Any other policy…you will simply be thinking of new ones again and again and again.
• From what I’ve seen in my classes, I think we need to consider reframing how we think about cell phone policies, at least at the high school level. Right now, we treat them as disciplinary behaviors; I think we need to seriously start looking at them as addiction treatments/interventions. There are mountains of data proving that brains respond to cell phones with the same chemicals as they do to drugs. I’ve seen so many students who are addicted to their phones — not an exaggeration, they are addicts, whether they know it/admit it, or not. And many of them want to break that addiction, but they don’t have the will power to do it on their own (we wouldn’t sit an alcoholic at a desk for 45 minutes with a bottle of scotch and then get mad if they’re distracted by it).
• When we cracked down on banning cell phones, we saw a huge increase in students asking to go to the bathroom and spending more time there, presumably using their phones. I would rather have the kids in class than asking to go to the bathroom every five minutes to send a few texts.
• We don’t have buy-in from all of our teachers. Some enforce the rules and others don’t and that just means the rules will stop working, especially for the students who need them in place.
• It starts at home. If a parent is getting their kid a cell phone, they need to teach them how to use it responsibly and then work with us to make sure our cell phone policies are followed. The problem is, I’ve had parents texting and calling students during the school day then getting mad at us if we don’t allow the students to use their phones to respond.
• It’s not just phones, but also smart watches! If there are going to be rules, it needs to apply to all the tech. I had a student, in elementary school, call her mom on her watch because she wasn’t allowed to use her phone….to complain to mom that I asked her to sit in her seat.
• According to latest research and my own experience in the classroom, Students should not have access to cell phones during the school day.
• Embrace phones because they aren’t going anywhere. Try to incorporate them when you can. Let students submit work through their phones. I know it’s not the popular opinion, or the one most want to hear, but we have been fighting a losing battle and I just don’t want to fight it anymore.
• Cell phones should be banned. Teaching for 18 years and it has only gotten worse since Covid. I would say 50% of my students are on their phones the majority of my class. It especially hurts the on-level students who don’t always have the best educational foundations by the time they reach high school.
• We’ve had dozens of incidents involving students refusing to put their phones away and subsequently refusing to give them up when the policy is not followed. It got to the point where security either stopped responding to these escalated phone situations or took their time doing so (don’t necessarily blame them). The students who consistently went against policy would just go to the office, get some candy from an administrator, and return the next day for the same song and dance.
• Studies have shown that even having the phone on their body is distraction enough from learning. If the teacher does not have the back phone to have all their students turn in their phones during class time then cell phones should not be brought to school. Now I understand the parents are scared of their children not having phones because what happens if they need to get in touch with their child. Well phones still exist and the parent and child can go to the office to make a phone call. these children do not need to be bringing their radio/boombox, TV, and every other distraction that’s on the Internet and on their phone to school every day. can you imagine back in the 80s and 90s and before we brought our TV to school to possibly watch or our boombox to listen to music? flip phones still exist. I got a flip phone for my child because I wanted to get in touch with her but I did not want her having access to everything on the Internet nor music nor TV. And let me not get started on social media. Parents need to seriously put their head in the game, restrict social media access to children at least younger than 16. If they’re not going to do it, it’s up to the schools to regulate access to those platforms. And if it means, we need to restrict access to smart phones then that’s what we need to start doing in addition to smart watches and any other smart device that will allow them to be distracted from learning.
• We need consequences when students don’t follow whatever policy is put into place. Without consequences there is no reason to follow the rules. Then comes the problem of what these consequences bring. Send a kid home and if they have a terrible home life where they won’t learn anything at all or could do something much worse than use a phone? Suspend them so they have multiple days at home in some cases without supervision? I don’t have answers but I am willing to try anything!
• If we have a no cell phone policy but a teacher is letting their students use their phones to record an interview or a gym teacher is letting students listen to music on their phone while running or an art teacher is letting their students use their phone for a reference photo then is there a real no cell phone policy?
• If the phones go away, there will just be windows open on their Chromebooks *sigh* which is another addiction…it never ends
Parents
• I don’t want my child to be unable to contact me in case of emergency, so maybe an “out of sight” policy would be most effective.
• I’m going to be very honest even if it’s a little selfish. I know a cell phone ban or whatever you want to call it would help our kids. We manage at home with two teenagers, but I know it’s nearly impossible to manage thousands of teenagers in one place. Are teachers taking phones? For how long? Would I have to miss work to come pick up a phone? Then what? It could strain a lot of otherwise good relationships in a lot of different areas.
• We teach our kids to not be attached to them at home so that they aren’t attached to them at school but we also don’t allow social media and that’s a big part of it.
• With all the full time working parents I feel it’s essential for kids to have their cell phones on them. However, they should be turned off during classes. They are there to learn. I like some of the teachers policies at QOHS. They have students put their cell phones in a shoe holder upon walking in and they can take it back after class.
• Classes have become more distracting and more learn if you want to…. We’re supposed to be building and guiding children into their adulthood. Not giving them freedom to learn or not, they don’t understand the consequences of ignoring education at any young age, even high school. I love the idea. We grew up just fine without cellphones in school.
• They should be banned in the classroom, but the teachers shouldn’t have an extra burden of enforcing it. I’ve heard about pouches that can be locked. I’d support that. Obviously, I also support medical exceptions; my son is diabetic and his Dexcom is connected to his phone and he needs to check that phone sometimes and respond to alarms, but I absolutely do not want him to have that phone out for other purposes. While we are at it, we also need to revisit excessive Chromebook usage too.
With varying opinions about what should happen and how to go about it, there appears to be a lot of work left to be done before a similar type of move can be made. In Virginia, the goal is to issue final guidance in September for local school divisions to adopt cell phone-free education policies and procedures by January 1, 2025. The Department of Education will facilitate listening sessions and other stakeholder engagement opportunities over the next six weeks to solicit public input on this policy, gather feedback on best practices currently underway in Virginia public schools, and receive input for the draft guidance establishing cell phone-free education in K-12 public schools.
Last month, the Stafford County School Board approved an updated Student Code of Conduct that includes a policy stating that electronic devices, including cell phones, must be kept silent and stored away during the school day, from first bell to dismissal. Per the policy, students may use their phones before and after school, during sports and activity practices, and under special circumstances. Dr. Thomas Taylor, the new MCPS Superintendent, was superintendent at Stafforc County Public Schools when this new policy was put into place.