With two cautious and critical members expressing their displeasure with the process, Thursday night (Oct. 10) the Board of Education unanimously adopted the policy that will allow the administration to ban student cellphone use at Wilton High School.
With the Wilton community somewhat split on whether it’s the right decision — and two student representatives expressing displeasure with the plan — school administrators continued to sell the idea up until the vote.
“If we make an honest effort, we really believe this can be beneficial,” WHS Principal Robert O’Donnell said.
Superintendent of Schools Kevin Smith highlighted news articles speaking to the benefits of an in-school ban, and even showed the meeting a short video that was sent to him from the Bethlehem, N.Y., school district, touting the success of the cellphone ban at their high school.
Right before the vote, however, BOE member Heather Priest called Smith out once again on his decision to allocate $80,000 to purchase about 2,000 of the magnetized storage bags in which students will be required to lock up their phones, along with magnets that operate the locking mechanism.
Smith said he had found the money at the end of June when the last fiscal year’s budget was zeroed out and that he felt it was prudent to make the purchase promptly based on his expectation that the district would go through with the ban.
“Can we, in the future, talk about — I don’t know where this would happen — expenditures without board permission?” Priest said.
“There’s a policy on it,” BOE Chair Ruth DeLuca said. “It’s perfectly permissible.”
Even thousands of dollars, Priest inquired.
“Yup,” DeLuca said.
“Without talking to anybody on the board?”
“Yup.”
“For a policy that’s never approved?” Priest asked.
“Yup.”
“Sure,” Smith said.
“That’s so interesting,” Priest said, adding after a long pause, “What’s the max? How much can a superintendent sign off on without permission?”
Smith responded, “I don’t have the answer to that question, but I think procedurally we can certainly talk about all expenditures and how they’re done.”
“Okay,” Priest said, “because I like the [cell phone] policy, I just wish it hadn’t happened this way.”
Following the vote, DeLuca looked at Priest in inquiry to confirm if the vote had been a 6-0 unanimous one, with BOE member Pat Pearson voting virtually.
“I’m an ‘aye,'” Priest said. “I just really don’t like this.”
Priest then, in turn, inquired if BOE member Nicola Davies had voted, as she didn’t appear to raise her hand or vocalize a vote.
“I’m all for the policy,” Davies said, “all for taking the phones out of the school to give this an opportunity, but yeah, I vote ‘yes,’ but …. I wish that this had been done differently.”
Speaking at the beginning of the meeting, two student officials, noting that they were “unbiased” as members of the WHS Student Executive Board, expressed considerable opposition to the plan.
“A change like this can feel really abrupt and drastic,” WHS junior class president Ellis Nichols said.
She said a lot of students are feeling blindsided by this change and that there was going to be a lot of pushback, with students breaking rules to get around the ban.
“We just feel that a big issue in banning the phones is not going to solve a lot of the issues it’s aiming to solve,” she said.
While she and WHS Executive Board Vice President Grant Stein pointed out that there were positives associated with the ban, student rebellion would occur.
“They’re going to rebel rather than listen,” Stein said, noting students would put fake phones into the magnetic pouches.
Instead, he suggested that the high school have students place cellphones on a “phone caddie” when they enter each classroom as a means of taking attendance, thus ensuring compliance.
Asked about the situation at Middlebrook School, Smith said the cellphone ban appears to be working well there without the use of the pouches.
“We’re just going to wait and see,” he said, “and if we need to use them there, we will.”
He said he purchased enough to serve both Middlebrook and WHS, with some replacement extras as well.
After the vote, DeLuca read a statement of support for the plan.
“I am persuaded that the benefits that will accrue to students and the school environment, both academic and social, in a cellphone-free school, outweigh the concerns,” she said.
“I believe our students are in good hands with building and district leadership … I also, as a board member and chair, look forward to hearing more from the administration as they implement the policy and evaluate outcomes,” she said.
This is a mistake by the board of ed and the superintendent. We are creating a problem where not existed and spending a lot of money in the process. I better solution would have been enforce the existing ban in classroom or tell kids to put phones in lockers and backpacks not spend on yonder pouches.
Also I fail to see how this prepares my children for their futures.
I find it incredibly hypocritical how the school and teachers force students to rely on technology to submit their homework and complete class work, going as far as to not accept homework handed in physically or making assignments due at 23:59 on a Friday night. Despite this they pretend like cell phones are the problem. I see no issue with the removal of personal devices in general and having all activities be done on paper or through other mediums as I believe this would genuinely benefit the students, but going half way? I believe this is a blatant violation in trust between the students and the administration and that there are significantly better applications for this money especially with the recent budget cuts of over 1 million. Furthermore I believe that this rule will be more of a nuisance for the teachers having to enforce the extensive multistep protocol as well as hurt the student and teacher relationship by forcing the teachers to be the “bad guys”. I have spoken to numerous teacher who have said that they have never had real issues with phone usage in their classes and that they do not not want to damage this relationship with the students by taking away the students phone. Instead, they insist that they will continue to do what they have always done and instruct the student to put the phone away. With all this said I believe that the administration should seriously reconsider the implications and consequences of this ban and how it will turn the students against the administration while being completely uncalled for.
Good!
The premise of this decision is good; keeping a cellphone-free environment in class to enhance learning, but there’s an issue with this; it’s just straight up flawed. There’s nothing you can do on your phone which you can’t do on your laptop; for instance, now with Mac laptops you can remotely access your phone using them. You can play games on your laptop, just as you can on your phone. You can use SnapChat, WhatsApp, even SMS on your laptop. Spending such an abysmal amount of money just to get rid of this issue is similar to money being simply tossed away. Yondr pounches are ridiculously easy to break open as well, seeing how you’ve spent about $30 per student just to solve this phone issue. This also brings up another point; phone caddies are JUST as effective; just check with all students who enter the classroom and make them put their phones there, and the phone is now out of reach. As opposed to spending, on average, $400 per classroom, you have now spent only $20 per classroom, or maybe even less. That remaining $75,000 or so could’ve been used for much better things, such as improving sanitization, investing in more programs to help the major disrespect and blatant bullying seen around the school, and here’s a big one, raising the pay for teachers and employees. For such a wealthy town, it’s straight up criminal to pay teachers barely enough to afford groceries and basic expenses with the amount of hard work they’re always doing, and ESPECIALLY what happens in those classes they have to take care of.
To build off of Mick Hamilton’s comment, I agree in the sense that I don’t believe there should be any compromise to the cellular device plan. Either you’d have to keep very basic enforcement of them or outright ban them from entering school property. There’s zero purpose for teachers having to take more time during class to ensure a somewhat lengthy process is completed. I never take my phone to school anymore as, well, they simply aren’t allowed to be used much and I can say there’s no issue with just completely banning them. Not only were the kids against it; so were parents. The phone caddies were perfectly fine. There have been very few instances where someone’s been in trouble for using a phone in the middle of class, at least from what i’ve seen. The money spent on this seems way, WAY more than what it should’ve been worth. Now of course since i’m just a Sophomore & my information comes from firsthand witnessing, I of course am not aware of much that goes on behind closed doors, and I’d like to formally apologize if any of what I said is objectively wrong. It’s evident that the WPS district is putting constant effort into these issues, and that’s commendable. I hope the Board of Ed takes this positively and takes different people’s perspectives into account.