To ban or not to ban: The school cell phone battle

One day last spring, eighth-grade teacher Amber Chandler asked her students to count the number of notifications on their cell phones during a section on digital citizenship.

The numbers: 589 in one class, 488 in another.

“Once we realized how many notifications were being sent to the pocket, it wasn’t hard to see how they would be distracted by that and the serotonin hit they get from their phones,” she said.

Chandler is among the teachers at the forefront of a national conversation taking place in schools and at home:

How much access should students have to phones in school?

Parents and educators worry about the mental health of children caught up in addictive apps that distract them from learning and interpersonal relationships.

Most schools have some book policy that limits where cell phones can be used, and cell phones are banned in schools in at least four states.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul embarked on a statewide listening tour to get feedback on a ban.

“This has become the challenge of our time,” Hochul said in July at Kenmore Junior Senior High School.

Chandler, an ELA teacher and president of the Central Frontier Teachers Association, blogs about teaching and hosted a webinar on negotiating social media in the classroom. She wonders how young people will learn good digital citizenship with their phones turned off at school.

“If we create a group of people who can’t regulate their phone use without it being locked, then they’re going to go to college, or then they’re going to go into the workforce, or they’re going to go into the military, and they won’t have had the practice in those self-restraint things,” she said.

After learning how many notifications students receive on their phones, Chandler will require them to put the devices in the front of the room this school year. She said it’s difficult for students to use their phones for educational purposes because they don’t stay focused and use the phone for that task.

“How can we teach them not to be so distracted by their phone when we can’t teach them because they are distracted by their phones?” Chandler said.

Lackawanna is among a growing number of schools and districts banning students from using cell phones starting this school year, which begins next week for the vast majority of students in the region.

Some districts are waiting to see if a statewide ban is enacted before taking that step.

“After Covid, we realized we had a cell phone problem,” Nadia A. Nashir, superintendent of the Lackawanna City School District, told The Buffalo News.

Lackawanna Middle and High School students will place their phones in a lockable bag at the start of the school day. They keep possession of their phones but won’t be able to access them until the end of the day when the bags are tapped on an unlock basis.

“I would say the students are not on board yet,” Nashir said. “I think in time they will realize how distracting cell phones have been and appreciate not only learning, but getting to know their classmates, the ones sitting right next to them instead of the virtual ones .”

One of the first things Jeff Margeson did when he became principal of Bolivar-Richburg Middle and High School in Allegany County two years ago was make sure cellphones stayed in lockers.

He convened a group of about seven parents to discuss the issue, then held a community forum to explain the reasoning and plan before starting.

By the time school starts at 8:03 a.m., phones must also be turned off in student lockers.

“I can’t get that back until 3:10 at dismissal,” he said.

In the first year, discipline referrals dropped 23 percent, from 80 a month to 62 a month, said Margeson, who was named superintendent in July. Last year, the school averaged 42 referrals per month, and that dropped to 28 in May and June.

“It helped tremendously,” he said. “No more bullying.”

And no more bathroom fights that are filmed and put on TikTok or Snapchat, and no more social media-inspired drama.

“You’d be teaching a class and all of a sudden a girl would look down at her phone and start to burst into tears and walk out of the class because someone just posted a picture of her or said something on social networks. he said.

There were 14 superintendent hearings into serious offenses in the year before the ban. It dropped to eight two years ago and two this past school year, and those two had nothing to do with cellphones, he said.

“Many of our teachers especially veterans said it was the most enjoyable year they’ve had teaching,” Margeson said.

The Bolivar-Richburg School District is small, with an enrollment of about 650, including about 340 students in the middle and high schools.

It had a cellphone policy that allowed students to use them during lunch, but enforcement has become lax over the years.

Penalties include a warning the first time. The second time a parent has to pick up the school phone and the third time the parent has to pick it up and the student has two detentions.

The district allows phones to be used for certain classroom assignments and under certain circumstances, he said.

Six or seven students had multiple offenses, and Margeson called their parents.

“We said, ‘Here’s the situation. You know your son or daughter is completely addicted to their cell phone and we have to try to stop them,” he said. “Mental health was the driving factor for me.”

Niagara Falls Superintendent Mark Laurrie isn’t sure a blanket ban would work at a large high school like Niagara Falls, which has nearly 2,000 students.

“It’s good to do politics there. How do you apply it?” he said. “I don’t want administrators to be tied up in confrontations over phones. We want to keep training time sacred.”

Students in Kindergarten through 8th grade must keep their phones in their lockers. 9th and 10th graders bag them at the front of the hall, and juniors and seniors can use them in the hallways and cafeteria.

“We’re trying to teach them to be responsible,” Laurrie said, “and to know that soon they’re going to go into a world where you can’t have her at work or college.”