Parents’ refusal to ban cell phones at school

As a growing number of schools move to limit student access to cellphones, many are navigating backlash from parents. They want to be able to bond with their children at some point.

Device bans were on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since schools reopened, difficulties with student behavior and mental health have given some schools even more reason to restrict access.

But parents and guardians who had constant access to their children during distance learning have been reluctant to give it up. Some fear losing contact with their children during a school shooting. In some cases, parental pushback has led to a change in policy.

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Cell phones — the ultimate distraction — are keeping kids from learning, educators say. But in efforts to keep phones away, the loudest reaction doesn’t always come from students. In some cases, it is from the parents.

Device bans were on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since schools reopened, difficulties with student behavior and mental health have given some schools even more reason to restrict access.

But parents and guardians who had constant access to their children during distance learning have been reluctant to give it up. Some fear losing contact with their children during school shootings.

Shannon Moser, who has eighth- and ninth-grade students in Rochester, New York, said she felt parents drifting away when the Greece Central School District this year began shutting down students’ phones. There is a form of accountability, she said, when students are able to record what is happening around them.

“Everything is so politicized, so divisive. And I think parents just have a general fear of what’s happening with their kids during the day,” Moser said. She said she generally holds liberal views, but many parents on both sides of the political divide feel the same way. .

Amid increased scrutiny of topics such as race and inclusion, some parents also see cell phone restrictions as a way to keep them out of their children’s education.

Over a decade ago, about 90% of public schools banned cell phone use, but that dropped to 65% in the 2015-2016 school year. By the 2019-2020 school year, bans were in place in 76% of schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. California and Tennessee have recently passed laws allowing schools to ban phones.

Now, in particular, teachers see the need to keep students on task to recover from pandemic shutdowns, when many students missed the equivalent of months of learning.

And many school officials may feel empowered to ban the devices, given parents’ growing concern about screen time in the pandemic era, said Liz Keren-Kolb, clinical associate professor of educational technologies at the University of Michigan. But she said parents’ views on the debate range.

“You still have parents who want to have that direct line of communication and have concerns that their child can’t have that communication,” she said. “But I think there’s more of an empathy and understanding of their child being able to put their device away so they can really focus on learning in the classroom and wanting that face-to-face experience.”

The Washington School District in western Pennsylvania implemented a ban this year after educators increasingly found cellphones a distraction. Students were on their cell phones in the hallways and at the cafeteria tables. Some would call home or answer calls in the middle of a class, Middle School English teacher Treg Campbell said.

Superintendent George Lammay said the ban was the right thing to do.

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“We’re looking to increase engagement and academic progress with kids — not try to limit their contact with families. This is not the case,” he said.

In some cases, pushback from parents has led to policy adjustments.

In the Brush School District in Colorado, cell phones were banned after teachers raised concerns about online bullying. When the parents spoke, the district held a community meeting that lasted more than two hours, with most of the testimony against the ban. The biggest takeaway, Superintendent Bill Wilson said, was that parents wanted their kids to have access to their phones.

The policy was adjusted to allow cell phones on campus, although they must be turned off and out of sight. The district also said it would accommodate a small portion of students with unique circumstances.

“There’s no point in saying cell phones are bad,” Wilson said. “It’s a reset to say, ‘How do we manage this in a way that makes sense for everyone?'”

In the Richardson Independent School District, near Dallas, student cell phone use was banned during class before officials proposed purchasing magnetic pouches to lock them during the school day. Parental backlash about the cost of the bags and concerns about emergency safety led to a scaled back plan to pilot the bags at one of the district’s eight high schools, Forest Meadow Junior High.

“We connected with our kids when we wanted to,” said Louise Boll, president of the Forest Meadow parent-teacher association. “There was a lot of opposition and a lot of concern in the beginning about what this would look like, how it would unfold, how it would affect us reaching out?”

Children and their parents have mostly adjusted to the new policy, she said.

In the online discussions of parent activists, there are many defenders of the cell phone ban. Some others, however, have criticized the bans as attempts to keep parents from seeing “violence” and “indoctrination” inside schools.

Legal action by parents remains rare, with one exception being an unsuccessful lawsuit by some parents against a 2006 ban on cellphones in New York City schools, which was eventually dropped in 2015. However, petitions against the ban cell phones in schools have been added this year to Change.org. a spokesman said.

There’s no perfect formula for cell phones in schools, said Kolb, who said the pendulum will likely swing away from bans depending on how attitudes about technology in schools change.

“It really comes down to making sure we’re educating students and parents about healthy habits with their digital devices,” she said.