The majority of the District 21 School Board meeting last night was taken up with a discussion of the governor’s mandate that all schools in the state must adopt a no cell phones policy during the school day.
As it turns out, D21 did a pilot program with the middle school last year that significantly reduced the number of time students were caught using their cell phones during class. Teachers and principals alike said the governor’s program was actually too lenient with several warnings before there were any consequences.
The reason the pilot program worked so well was that the rules were very clear and were clearly communicated to students and parents at the start of the school year.
Previous to the pilot program, by not actually separating the phones or other smart devices from students, they found many more requests to go to the bathroom so they could check their devices without getting caught.
Ultimately, the district decided to continue the pilot program at the middle school and expand it to the other schools in the district.
As chair Betsy Hege put it about the Oregon School Boards Association sample policy:
“The OSBA sample policy may be suitable for other schools that tried this but did not think out their own program and now have to rely on the rulemaking and that we are different and that we pioneered our own program. I think we should align our policy with our success.”