The Unit 5 school board wants the administration to consider banning cell phones in district schools. The potential major policy change surfaced during a brief remark from school board president Jeremy DeHaai during last week's meeting.
"What we would like to do is sometime in the next couple months, if you could prepare for a discussion to initiate the conversation reviewing our current policies, pros and cons of a potential cell phone ban and just what that might look like," said DeHaai.
The current policy in both Unit 5 and District 87 leaves decisions up to individual teachers or building administrators. Some confiscate them temporarily. Some bargain with the kids to use them only in the last few minutes of class. Some just live with the phones.
DeHaai said Unit 5 should look at the landscape of policies.
"As we see in the news, there are a lot of school districts locally, statewide, and across the country that are implementing cell phone bans," said DeHaai.
One of those is the Los Angeles School District that acted last spring. Indiana schools have a statewide ban. Decatur schools will start banning them when kids come back next month. In Peoria, the board in June approved purchasing up to 9,000 cell phone storage pouches. The pouches lock automatically when the top is snapped together and can be unlocked by tapping the pouch against a magnetic base placed outside of “phone free zones.”
Arguments for cell phone bans generally center on eliminating distractions and curbing toxic social media exchanges during school hours that can boil over into classroom disruptions. Arguments against cell phone limits include public safety, potential need for parents to connect with their kids, and the idea that bans don't help teach kids responsible use of social media.
DeHaai said it's the start of a dialogue on the subject.
"Just so we as a board can understand what would be the best steps forward for the students in our district," he said.
Administrators have put it on the list of things to study. It'll be several months before they get back to the board and there's no firm deadline. Right now, Unit 5 is in the glide path toward the start of the school year, a start that for now still includes allowing phones in many places at school.
