District 87 is not considering a districtwide cell phone ban for students during school hours, according to superintendent David Mouser, as districts across the country experiment with such bans starting this fall.
Unit 5 is currently mulling implementing a phone ban in its schools, with the school board last month asking the administration to consider such a policy.
The current policy in both Unit 5 and District 87 is to leave decisions related to cell phone use up to individual teachers or building administrators. Some confiscate the phones temporarily. Others bargain with the students to use them only in the last few minutes of class. Still others give up entirely and just live with the phones in their classrooms.
According to Mouser, this situation is not going to change anytime soon in District 87, though a phone ban still may be considered in the future.
“It’s a conversation we have,” Mouser told WGLT at the school board's meeting on Wednesday. “And I think, obviously, there are a lot of schools around us… that are trying that. And we want to see how that goes for folks.”
Mouser said there is a conflict between “two schools of thought” on phones in schools: ban them, or “try to teach responsible use.”
He said the current policy at Bloomington Junior High School is that phones must be in lockers, and if they are confiscated, they must be picked up at the end of the day by a parent — not the student. But at Bloomington High School, students are only expected to put their phones away while they are in class, and it’s up to individual teachers to enforce the rule.
Mouser said that the phones are “always a distraction,” though he qualified that they are only an obstruction in the classroom “depending on how they’re being utilized.”
“But I will tell you that I as a teacher, I would just tell students, ‘You’re not using your phones right now,’” he added. “And I’m going to monitor that behavior in the classroom. And that’s what our teachers do really well, but at the same time, yeah, they can be a distraction.”
“They also can be a positive for a lot of kids,” added Mouser, referencing the use of calendar and note-keeping apps.
“But in my opinion, if you’re asking what Dave Mouser’s opinion is about cell phones in schools, I don’t love them at all,” he concluded.
When asked about research from social psychologists on the detrimental impacts smartphones may have on student mental health and attention spans, Mouser said “to me it’s a societal thing, it’s not a school issue.”
“It’s become such a part of our society, and how do we, as a school, solve that societal issue of distractions provided by cell phones and social media and everything else that goes along with it,” he said. “Or, should we take the approach of trying to teach responsible use and how to monitor that in a school setting.”
