Dr. Landahl stated: "This is really founded in talking to our teachers because they are on the front lines of this. Brian Soltish and Corey both at their buildings have spent a lot of time with groups of teachers and leadership gathering input over the last several months about what they want to see in terms of this. I think we are talking about 130 teachers [and 1,400 students] between the two schools, so there's, like with anything, a wide range of opinions, but essentially, the bulk of feedback we've gotten from those teachers is they really want to start with a cell phone free classroom restriction policy. That would be in each class putting the phones away in a designated space that the students would be able to to get the phones at the end of class and move on to the next class."
After the Board voted to pass the Code of Conduct changes, which included the classroom pouching of the cell phones, Dr. Landahl reinforced: "We did then engage with teacher leadership in both buildings (High School and Middle School) in terms of crafting something. This is something that I think both Faculties and Administration felt unified behind, so teachers were involved and will be very involved obviously as we go.”
How The Board Responded To The Cell Phone Pouching Policy
As the Beacon Board of Education has been debating this issue for some time, opinions were expressed again the night of the August 19th meeting.
Boardmember Anthony White stated: “If the purpose of education is to prepare kids for post-secondary, whether that be a Career College, whatever that may be, and when you go into a job, they don't say 'Hey there's a cell phone ban' when you go to a college. It's trying to have them learn the responsibilities of how to do it, and you do that in a structured environment in school. You're educating kids how to use it appropriately. But then I also feel as a parent, I have 3 kids. One just graduated, one's into High School, and one's going into 6th grade. I put blocks on stuff. I block out the social media for the 6th grader all day. He only has only a 2hour window where he could even go on it. And then as he shows that he's able to deal with it, and monitor it as a parent, I'm doing that. I want the school to educate my kid, and if there's an issue with it, where I find it - and I'm fine with the policy as it's written and everything - but the internal struggle is: how are we preparing the kid for post-secondary when we are just taking it [the cell phone] away. You can't just take stuff away and say: 'Okay. Now you're going to go get it.'"
During the questioning of the principals, opportunities for digital literacy was raised by Boardmember Kristan Flynn, where the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Student Support, Dr. Sagrario Rudecindo-O'Neill, was able to answer that digital literacy has been a part of student curriculum at all school levels, which includes presentations by experts in the field like a Mr. Gary. Kristan asked the principals if they felt the curriculum had been effective.
Principal Soltish answered: “Yeah. I think when you talk to the kids about digital citizenship, I think they get it. Do I think sometimes kids still make poor choices? Yes, absolutely. I think for the most part, our student body is very empathetic and and compassionate towards other kids. But I think from time to time, we don't always make the best choice. Part of going through school is learning. You just hope that if a choice is made that's not the best, that they learn from it, and that it's not a high impact on someone else. Part of the main point in Mr. Gary's speech is "‘Public and Permanent.’ He’s going to really hit on the taking of a picture and what that can do not only to you, but to the to a student. If you're taking a picture of them and it's just like you're sending it to your group because you think it's funny. So he's really going to do a lot of conversation around the damage, and what happens when you make that permanent digital footprint on the internet.”
Boardmember Christopher Lewine questioned the outside of school usage of phones, and if interacting with each other digitally versus of face to face: “I think we also need to teach kids to socialize with each other and not have their eyes down on their phones. Some of the advocacy we've heard is not just about kind of extreme fights or those kinds of things, or even just the anxiety that someone might be taking a picture of you. If everyone's on their phones at lunch, that sort of that anxiety can be very present. Even if it's not actually happening. I'm also kind of okay with the current policy as a step, but I'm very curious about hearing more about how kids are using phones outside of the classroom because I don't think that's as much a focus of this, and as we figure out what the next step is or isn't with education or other restrictions, it's not just a classroom attention but to me, it's that anxiety that we're feeling if everyone is just on their phones all the time outside of class.
"We're teaching the digital citizenship, but these are addictive devices with addictive properties that even as adults we struggle to to monitor. So is it fair to ask kids to make good choices in that context. I would just love to hear more about how how the in between class time is going with phone usage, and if this assembly and the education if we see decreases in number of kids on their phone and more kind of interacting socially in a human way, because if we don't, I'd be curious what it would take to help kids engage with each other here in the human kind of world and not always have the eyes down on the phone and in the social or in between times."
Boardmember Anthony countered that identification of what face to face interaction was acceptable by talking about the preference that his own 6th grader has with staying in the library to watch different specialized shows in his quest to become a sports announcer.
Boardmember Alena Kush wanted to hear from the students through data collected during the new policy. She asked Dr. Landahl: “When you do the data, can you do it also not just pulling those that got any type of discipline or got called out, but also track those that got called out maybe earlier, and then didn't get called out at all, later on in semester, and then the academic year. And then bring those students back in and say 'Well what happened. Was it a one-off that you got sent here?’
“Because you can manipulate data, I would be curious to see for the student who got caught maybe one or two times in like, September, and then maybe get them in January February. Just kind of meet up with them and say: 'Hey how's it going...You haven't been down here for pulling the phones out. How is it going?' And then maybe pull kids who haven't got called at all to see what's their perspective.
"One of the research [points] you said from talking to a Newburgh kid was like they kind of didn't want the phone and then when it was actually banned they were like: 'Oh, I don't really want it banned,' and then they kind of talked to them at the end of the year and it was like: 'It's actually helpful.' So we're going to pull data. We can pull it at different points with different students. And then I think when we sit here again, or we have to change something, we just have a well-rounded picture right of why we're making the change."
Changes In Code of Conduct As It Relates To Cell Phones
Dr. Landahl read the changes made to the Code of Conduct, which can be found in this document, highlighted in yellow. Not related to cell phone was a change to the Dress Code, which is the exclusion of sunglasses: “Sunglasses cannot be worn in school.”
As for cell phones, Dr. Landahl stated that there was an addition to Level II of the Infractions: "Refusal to put cell phone in designated areas directed by School Staff."
He explained: "We added a little bit of language for our Sexual Harassment that happens in school, connecting it with our policy. We added language, [and] I'll read the sentence: 'Creating or disseminating images or fake images of other students or staff that are vulgar, profane, obscene, harassing, threatening, or discriminatory.'"
Lastly, he addressed one addition to the List of Consequences: “The Consequence List has worked well for us. We've had the code for 5 years now. We added 'Removal of cell phone privileges.' Mr. Soltish and Mr. Dwyer spoke about that pretty extensively at the last meeting in terms of what that would be, but just to be clear: Parents would obviously be a part of this process, but it would be a student having to turn their phone into like to the Assistant Principal for a day, for 3 days, for 5 days. It would not be us holding the phone except during the school day. It wouldn't be us holding the phone at night or anything like that. The phone would be returned to the student at the end of the school day."
