Reply to MCPS cell phone restriction program shows promising changes, staff say

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How about Admin? Are they on their personal phones during school day? Does the ban or away program apply to them also?[/quote]

You don’t see the difference between the administration and the kids not having access to phones? Come on.

My kids are at a school with this program and it works fine. Even my kids have said that there is so much less drama than last year. It took all of a week for them to get used to it and it’s a non issue now. I’m glad they are going to Rockville for high school. Kids don’t need access to phones in class. They just don’t. [/quote]

Same at DC's middle school. It is so so much better.  Kids griped for the first week or two and now it is a non-issue.  I am seriously surprised at the parental opposition to this here.[/quote]

Because getting into this dilutes the message that we need to be sending to MCPS - which is, please for the love of GOD, for the sake of ALL students, take away the phones! [/quote]

Why are you sending a phone to school with your child?  Monitor your own kid.  With all the school violence phones are important.[/quote]

Phones cause more violence than they solve.  And if there is a shooting, and your kid texts you, what are you going to do?  If you text back and the phone lights up and gets her killed, how will you feel?  If she misses a direction from a staff member bc she was texting you, and she gets killed, how will you feel?

This “but school shootings!” makes no sense to me.   That’s exactly when your kid needs to have situational awareness and not have a distracting, beeping device in their pocket![/quote]

The problem with your argument is that it assumes teachers and principals are well trained and capable of leading and commanding a group of terrified kids in the midst of a lockdown. As a parent at a school that recently had a lockdown, I can assure that's not the case. The teachers are just as confused and looking to their phones as the kids. MCPS has not trained teachers or principals to the level you're assuming to lead and control kids in these scenarios. It is far more often chaotic.

So in a chaotic, uncontrolled scenario, your kid might be better off having that phone and staying in contact with you.[/quote]

They might be. But if they are following the no phones during class rule but kids can still have them on their person, this will not be an issue. Which sounds like it is the rule at Rockville. There is a big difference between what will be allowed during a school shooting and what is allowed during regular class time. If the happy medium is that kids are still allowed to carry their phones, just can't use them during class without consequence, I'm fine with that. But you have to start somewhere.[/quote]

Sure. And I can agree with that.

But then you have to ensure your enforcement mechanisms so that the phone is only used in those scenarios is actually followed.

And what was said, verbatim from Julie Yang's mouth, is that even with those Bell-to-Bell policies, kids are not following the policies and are instead spending way more time doing the wrong things on their phones.

So again: MCPS needs to figure out how to draft and ENFORCE a cell phone policy that achieves the outcomes it's seeking. And right now, Bell-to-Bell won't cut it, unless enforcement is stepped up in a serious way. And what the Rockville HS principal articulated did not sound serious and Julie Yang undercut the principal's rosy take on the policy when she said she talked to Rockville HS students and they admitted they were using the phone when they weren't supposed to without consequence.[/quote]

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