The Unit 5 school board on Wednesday heard updates to the district’s cell phone policy and the budget.
The district’s cell phone policy was updated in a revision to the district’s student behavior code. Phone policy was the subject of a survey discussed during the April board meeting. Multiple teachers spoke during public comment asking the district to create a “phone free classroom.”
The school board heard a first reading of the amended phone policy. The wording change is that phones are to be put away during instruction time, unless a student is using it for “educational purposes” and granted permission from the instructor.
“That is not dissimilar to other area districts in McLean County,” said superintendent Kristen Weikle.
While results of the survey showed a decrease in phone-related office referrals, one teacher said the reason is actually that teachers are just sending fewer referrals — not that cell phones in class have become less of a problem.
“The great majority of teachers here at West have simply given up writing referrals for cell phones,” said Remy Garard, an English teacher at Normal West high school.
Survey data seem to support that. Just 6.8% of staff at Normal West who completed the survey felt that students are always or often held accountable if they violate the current phone policy; 86.3% felt students were rarely or never held accountable.
“I totally understand the anecdotal, because many of the teachers are in the classroom, living it, but it is difficult for us to be able to know numbers if that information is not reported,” said Weikle.
The recommended policy that resulted from the cell phone study was for phones to be silent and put away unless given permission from a staff member. Students also can have them out during passing periods, at lunch, or before and after school.
“The current system for dealing with cell phone violations is inadequate and unsustainable. The truth of the matter is that teens are not able to resist their phones,” said Garard. “The current system puts the burden of creating [a learning environment] solely on the teacher, while constantly introducing external distractions with no support for reducing them.”
Other Unit 5 staff members agree. Only 19% of high school teachers were satisfied with the current cell phone policy, according to the survey, and just 16% felt that their principals and assistant principals enforce the current policy.
A future Unit 5 parent, Casey Peterson, said over-reliance on phones leads to difficulties after graduation, adding he has learned from his time on the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council that employers have been noticing.
“One employer put it best when they said the recent graduates have a very hard time once we hire them because they cannot focus on tasks longer than 10 minutes. About half can't make that transition, and we have to terminate them."
Budget update
Also Wednesday, the board heard a presentation from Marty Hickman, chief financial officer, about projections for the 2025 fiscal year amended budget.
“Pretty much every year, even at this late date, we still haven't received nearly 50% of our revenue for the year. That will be in a property tax payment that we receive,” said Hickman.
That money usually comes on the last Friday of May, which is May 30 this year.
During the last fiscal year, Hickman said the district received slightly less from its tax levy than in prior years, which shifted more revenue into the fund for this fiscal year. The result is a projected revenue increase. Extra hirings not factored into the original budget have upped expenditures for salaries. The education fund balance is at $5 million, shy of the $6.7 million initially projected, he said.
“So a little bit less, but I'll stress again this, this assumes that all budget expenditure dollars are used. Traditionally, that doesn't happen,” said Hickman. “I would foresee that we will, if not the full $6.7 million, we will come very close to that to fund balance.”
Hickman said it is the same scenario for the operations and maintenance fund.
School handbooks
In another matter, the board received an update on school handbooks from Brandon Caffey, director of student services. Previously, Unit 5 has operated using four different student handbooks. In the fall, a committee was assembled to consolidate these into one handbook suitable for the whole district.
The handbook committee wants to make the new handbook available both in PDF form and as a digital flipbook.
Caffey said a digital flipbook allows for a more interactive reading experience, embedding videos or animations, and allows the district to collect useful data and metrics, such as seeing who has utilized the flipbook.
“We expect to get our final updates from press, either in late June or early July, and then we would add those updates before finally publishing it to our community,” said Caffey.
