The Beacon City School District Board of Education (BOE) has been debating the District’s cell phone policy for students, having experimented with a put-away-per-classroom policy last year. During the August 26th, 2024 BOE Meeting, the Board did pass the new cell phone policy which keeps phones with students during the school day, but directs students to put them into a pouch that looks like a hanging fabric shoe rack per classroom, leaving the teacher of that room to implement as is fitting for their room. Cell phones can be used during lunch and recess periods. Changes were also made to the Code of Conduct to address Sexual Harassment that can happen digitally, and an addition to the List of Consequences. These specifics can be found below in this article, which includes quotes from Beacon’s Superintendent, Principals of the Middle and High Schools, Board Members, and Parents.

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Parents, caregivers and other stakeholders have been vocalizing varying opinions on cell phones in schools, ranging from a full out full-day cell phone ban, to a classroom policy that allows kids to keep their phones throughout the day, and access them during designated periods. Governor Hochul has implied that she is also wants to set a state-wide policy which would override district policies, but that has not happened yet; only a “listening tour” for the Governor to hear feedback.

At Beacon’s August 19, 2024 Board of Education Meeting, the Board did pass the first of a 2-step process to implement the new put-away-per-classroom cell phone policy for students, or “Pouch It” as ALBB is calling it. The new policy would require a change to the Code of Conduct, which requires 2 voting sessions to pass. The first voting session was passed on August 19th, and the second vote scheduled for August 26th also passed. This final vote required a Public Hearing to hear from the public, which did happen Monday night.

“Pouch It”: Beacon’s Put-Away-Per Classroom Policy

During the August 19th Board meeting, Dr. Landahl unveiled the proposed policy in a slide deck. The presentation included several aspects of the policy and how it will work. At its base, the proposed policy would work like this:

Elementary Schools:

(South Avenue, JV Forrestal, Glenham, Sargent)
All electronic devices will be stored away all day in student backpacks.

Rombout Middle School

Students will put cell phones in designated spaces in each classroom. Dr. Landahl stated that these may be in hanging pouches, like fabric shoe racks, that are on back-order, scheduled to arrive a month or two into the school year. Teachers will implement their own methods with the pouches in the classroom. Kids will pick up their phones out of the pouches during each class change, to have them in the hallways, at lunch and recess.

Smart watches and ear buds will be put away on each student, but not into the pouches. Principal Soltish of Rombout Middle School told the Board of Education at the August 19, 2024 meeting that the smart watches and ear buds were not so much of an issue.

Beacon High School

Students will put cell phones into designated spaces per classroom using the pouches described above, and put earbuds away, similar to the Middle School Policy.

Parental Response To The New Cell Phone Policy

Some of the more vocal parents and caregivers vocalized support for a full-day ban on all cell phone use, stating mainly fear of addiction and harms caused by social media utilized on the phone. The Board indicated that stakeholders had also emailed in their opinions. The Board did not read those emails or indicate what they said during the last two Board meetings.

A working group called Beacon Parents for Phone Free Schools was formed by some parents. The group pushes for a full-day phone restriction. A handful of parents from that group spoke at the July 22th, August 19th and August 24th, 2024 meetings.

During the August 19th meeting, Catherine Buscemi spoke to say she was part of that working group, and felt a classroom restriction was a step in the right direction, but stated specifics on what she wanted to see: "Problems are happening outside the classroom at lunch and recess in bathrooms and hallways where filming without consent and bullying are most rampant." She also stated her belief that a full-day ban removes the "burden of police from teachers."

Further focus was placed on removing distractions like "giving back the freedom from FOMO (fear of missing out) on something happening in social media, and the ability to "reconnect mentally and socially eyes-up interacting with real life around them without the distraction of counting down the minutes until they can get their phones out again." She advocated for schools to collectively ban the device to reduce stress from social media.

The Wappingers Central School District has not banned the phones full day, but has introduced the Yondr (a singular lockable personal pouch) to be used only when a student is disciplined multiple times and needs temporary, personalized enforcement).

Hana Ramat, also part of the full-day ban group, stated during the August 24th meeting after the Board voted to pass the Classroom Pouch-It Policy: “The related changes to the student Code of Conduct are an improvement; however, not by nearly as much as we had hoped. I feel angry and disappointed that our new policy does not include a full day phone ban according to the mounting research our group has presented to the Board through comment numerous emails and our comprehensive deck. There is no known benefit to children to allow phone use at all during the school day. I do not seek to take away anything from our kids or other parents with a full-day ban. In fact, I kind of hate the language to ban it as it lands as a negative deduction. When in fact, I see it as a gift - one of the greatest gifts we can give our children right now - the gift of focus.”

Jean Huang, a past president of the JV Forrestal PTSO and current member of the Foundation for Beacon Schools, spoke on her own behalf not voicing opinions of those groups, to say that she was also a member of the full-day ban group. She had provided a deck to the Board. "We think that doing the full-day ban and especially with pouching would really be the best option. It's the way that so many districts local to us as well as across the state are going and we think that is going to be the most effective measure as any half measures. Where the kids are still allowed to have phones at recess and lunch will not really solve the problems of bullying and self-harm and all the horrible things that go along with social media and smartphone usage."

Jean mentioned a $100,000 grant recently signed into law in Pennsylvania (see summary here) that helps pay for personal lockable pouches, with the caveat that students pouch their phones for the entire day, and that schools must monitor the effectiveness of such a ban.

Greta Byrum spoke as a lone supporter of in-school cell phone usage at the July 22nd meeting. Greta is an information professional for 15 years in the area of public interest technology and is a Principal for Broadband and Digital Equity at HR&A Advisors, working with broadband and digital equity and digital safety.

Greta said: "We should think a lot about he implications of the freedom of information and civil rights both through implementation of a policy that would remove or ban cell phones. Also in terms of what it would take to enforce something like that, including what kind of monitoring or surveillance would need to happen...Banning sources of information can be a bit of a slippery slope, and we could end up in a situation where we have to monitor what's on the bodies of our children."

Greta also spoke to education vs bans: "A policy is a pretty blunt instrument especially, if it's like a broad ban. I think there's a lot more to think about in terms of this. Secondly, in terms of how kids respond to prohibitions or bans versus being educated or learning about developing group norms: if our goal is to develop a healthy relationship to technology, then there are a lot of curricula that are out there that have to do with setting group norms around phone use and giving kids some agency, and their parents some agency.”

As a single parent, Greta represented, by saying: "It's important to me that I be able to reach my child during the days. A lot of times we have to figure out what's going on after school, or I will need to speak with my child about something that's happening. [Regarding] scary incidents, including school intruders, I would want to be able to be in contact with my child."

At a later meeting, Katie Hellmuth spoke support of in-school cell phone use at the August 24th meeting, saying: “It has been argued that social media is designed to be addictive. Yes. So is sugar. And food. And alcohol. And smoking. And TV watching. And sex. And water. And learning. Because we need all of those things. Except smoking cigarettes. But we don't full ban those things. We learn how to have them in moderation. We teach ourselves that. Some of us are better at it than others. Some of us are physically less capable of doing that because of how are bodies are made. We must be taught how to recognize our triggers, and how to move through those triggers into self-regulation.”

Regarding safety during school intruder incidents, Katie said: “When you are in an emergency, you are a team. You become warriors and victims at the same time. On my team, I want the little eyes and ears who know the school well. Who know where the other warriors and victims are. Who are exchanging ideas in case they are stuck and the official Plan of Authority isn't working. Because you always need a Plan B, C and D. Sometime made on the fly. Despite every expert's best intention and training.”

Teacher’s Involvement With The Classroom Free Phone Policy

Dr. Landahl at the August 26th meeting did indicate that teachers had varying opinions of how they wanted to handle cell phones. Some teachers, he said, supported phones in school, while others wanted restrictions.

Board member Eric Schetter, whose son is a teacher in the district, said at the August 26th meeting: “I think it's a vital piece to get input from the administrators; from the teachers and students. My son is a teacher [in the Beacon City School District] and he's kind of all over the place on this as well. So I hear quite a bit.”

The Newburgh Free Academy was stated as an example of a school that had gone phone-free with Yondr pouches (portable pouches that lock so that an individual cannot open it to use their phone).

Jessica Welch Eriksmoen also spoke, stating that she wanted to "give our teachers the ability to say what happens in their room" and to support teachers to "get their jobs done because they are challenged as it is." She went on to cite the movie The Social Dilemma with a focus on how social media can allow ideas of self-harm to perpetuate.

Teachers and School Administrators Respond to Cell Phone Policy

Dr. Landahl asked the principals of the Middle and High Schools, Brian Soltish and Corey Dwyer respectively, to submit their comments and feedback to the new policy at the August 19th meeting.

Principal Dwyer explained that he had been working with teachers at the High School on this prior, implementing an experiment of a cell phone free classrooms with 20 teachers and found success with it. When asked by Board Member Kristan Flynn to expand, he stated: "At the High School, we had talked with our teachers and gotten feedback at the end of the 2022/2023 school year. Teachers had said 'You know, we'd like to think about what we can do about phones.' So we opened up the year last year by saying we want to try to reduce the amount of phone usage in class. I gave teachers basically the option of a shoe rack or having to just keep their phones in their backpacks. The teachers who chose to go with the shoe rack and who kind of stayed on top if it all year with specific examples saw more success with it. We didn't do a lot around enforcement or consistency, but the teachers that chose to keep up with it all year all had success with it.” Principal Dwyer stated that the genesis of the experiment wasn't a response from teachers to student behavior issues, but a desire to keep student's attention.

Principal Soltish confirmed that at the Middle School there was not a pouching experiment conducted because students had less issues with taking them out during class. Principal Soltish said: “Most teachers were pretty strict with not allowing cell phone use in the classroom. Obviously with the younger age student, it's a little easier to get that compliance." Later, he said: "My teachers are in favor of having a system in place where the phones are stored for the period.”

When Boardmember Semra Ercin asked Principal Soltish if the Middle School teachers favored keeping the phones away for the entire day vs managing them throughout the day through class changes, Principal Soltish emphasized the classroom-only preference, stating: “Teachers were in favor of collecting them at the start of the period and giving them back at the end of the period knowing that the responsibility would be on them, as opposed to having them removed for the entire day.”

Principal Dwyer agreed, speaking for the teachers at the High School. “I agree. I think the practicality of implementing, [for instance] the pouches...You know, there's some questions involved there and I think a lot of it would still probably fall on teachers to some degree. It may be asking the teacher to then kind of be on the front lines of enforcing something that might be more difficult to get students to buy into.”

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."