The debate over phones in schools has been a hot topic lately across the nation. With bans happening in countless cities and some even state-wide, could MHS be next? One of our four pillars here is to be present and free of distractions, and the staff has been cracking down. Phones are to be kept in backpacks and turned off, but plenty of class time is still spent on our phones. Sometimes you just need to send a quick text or pull up a photo to show your friends, but often they become a huge distraction.
According to the Pew Research Center, 72% of US high school teachers say cell phone distraction is “a major problem in the classroom,” and school districts like Fort Wayne Community Schools in Indiana have already gone phone-free. They have implemented Yondr pouches to lock phones away while on school grounds. These are the same pouches used in the testing room here at MHS, except we only use them in the testing room. With Fort Wayne’s new policy, students are to lock their phones at the start of the day and only be able to unlock them at the end of the day via a magnet. Complaints have flooded in since this installation with opinions that students should always have access to their phones in case of an emergency or worries over the practicality of magnetic locks. This policy is new this year so it may take some time to figure out any issues that arise, but this isn’t the first or the last to be implemented.
Statewide phone bans have been put into action in Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina that completely ban phones from all schools, while states like California, Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia have passed laws
requiring school districts to have some form of policy. A few other states have incentives or recommendations regarding phone policies, but nothing has been fully implemented statewide. A Minnesotan law was passed earlier this year that requires all school districts to adopt a policy on students’ possession and use of cell phones by March 15, 2025. To be clear, that does not mean MHS will ban phones from premises or lock them in pouches. This policy just states that “cellular phones and other personal devices shall remain silent and be kept out of sight during instructional time, unless specifically allowed by the teacher or other school staff.” Though we might not love it, it sounds like it’s up to us to put our phones away to prevent a total phone ban.
