The Wake County school board approved its first-ever districtwide cellphone policy Tuesday night, by a unanimous voice vote in favor.
It requires phones to be silenced and put away and smartwatches to be disconnected from smartphones.
The board went back over the proposed policy during its afternoon work session ahead of the vote during the regular board meeting. Board members have extensively deliberated a policy for months, following some surveying a focus group conducted last fall and winter.
The school board gave tentative approval to the policy last month and needed to approve it in a second vote before it could become an official policy. The policy will now go into effect next school year, which begins in July for year-round schools.
This is the first cellphone policy that’s districtwide in Wake County. Most schools already have a policy restricting cellphones, but the district’s own surveying suggests teachers and parents still think cellphones are distracting.
At a base level, the policy keeps most elementary and middle school students off of their phones all day, while allowing some exceptions at the high school level. It’s an effort to keep cellphones from being a distraction in schools, as Wake County teachers and parents contend they currently are.
States and school systems across the country are cracking down on phones in schools, and two bills that have advanced in the North Carolina General Assembly seek to require school boards to adopt policies like Wake.
What’s in the new cellphone policy
Here’s what Wake’s new policy does:
- Requires phones and other wireless communication devices to be stored in a locker, backpack, bag or some other place that is out of sight and not easily accessible
- Requires smartwatches to be disconnected from smartphones
- Disallows elementary or middle school students from using their phones for academic purposes, though high school students still could
- Allows cellphones for students with accommodation needs in their disability plans, health plans, emergencies or when needed for translation or assistive communication
- Allows phones to be used at the high school level when teachers authorize their use for learning or during noninstructional times, such as lunch or transition times
- Allows staff to limit cellphone use on buses when cellphone use potentially interferes with safety, and states students should listen to music or videos with headphones to help keep noise down for the benefit of driver and student safety
- Allows school staff to confiscate a cellphone if the student is not complying
- States confiscated phones should be returned at the end of class, but administrators can determine that a phone should be confiscated for the rest of the day, or even require a parent or guardian to pick it up, if the student is especially disruptive or has repeatedly violated the rule
The policy adds some rules not previously considered in school-level policies.
In a recent Wake principal survey, most principals said their school-level policies didn’t address smartwatches or phone use during lunch time or class transition times.
The policies will be in effect from the morning instructional bell to the afternoon instructional bell. During prior board committee meetings, members had favored allowing school principals to make the restrictions last for longer portions of the day, but they backed off of that Tuesday after deciding the district needed more consistency across schools.
The policy urges families to contact the school’s front office, a counselor, a teacher or another school official when they need to get ahold of their children about scheduling changes, promising that staff will relay messages to those students.
During the board’s public comment period, only one person addressed the policy.
Margaret Bilodeau, a parent of multiple children in the district, said she was concerned that exemptions for students with health plans or disability plans wouldn’t be honored. The disability plans for her children, she said, are already ignored sometimes, which she said is not a problem unique to her children’s schools.
Bilodeau proposed a plan that includes “fair boundaries” and education on how to use digital devices.
“Please take it back and engage with communities most affected,” Bilodeau said.
Disagreements over confiscation
Students not following the policy will first receive a verbal warning to put their phones away and/or silence their device.
Confiscation of phones is then allowed, but that’s also a sticking point, the board learned Tuesday.
A district survey of more than 2,500 teachers found that most teachers — about 62% — supported device confiscation. At the same time even more teachers — 76% — thought having teachers confiscate a phone could be disruptive to the classroom. About 59% believe confiscation should be a last resort when other classroom management efforts have failed.
The district surveyed principals, as well, and 89 responded. Among them, the vast majority said they had a cellphone policy at their school but most did not specify how devices would be confiscated or by whom.
Principals recommended a warning to the board Tuesday.
Board Member Lindsay Mahaffey motioned for the policy to include the warning before any confiscation, believing immediate confiscation on a first offense is too harsh.
“Schools should be a place to learn from your mistakes,” she said.