Reply to Parent advocates who lobbied for Away All Day phone policy feel blindsided, ignored by new MCPS phone policy

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Reply to "Parent advocates who lobbied for Away All Day phone policy feel blindsided, ignored by new MCPS phone policy"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Do these advocates even have HSers?

I’ve had one graduate HS and now at an Ivy and another in HS currently.  They absolutely need their phones.  First, they don’t have lockers.  Second, there is no room in the cafeteria and food is inedible so they use their phones to order food for pickup at lunch as they walk over to the restaurant to get their sandwich/salas/burrito.  Third, they do have doctors appointments that they get themselves too.  Fourth, they need the phone to drive (and again, no lockers).  Fifth, they need the phones to check studentvue and canvass to stay on top of deadlines (no, it’s not reasonable to expect someone to handle 7 AP classes without electronic calendaring).  Sixth, the phone is very useful for things like the note app to keep track of things to do.  Seventh, the phone doesn’t create any moral hazard not already present with the school chrome books which have zero parental controls and on which they can also watch dumb or obscene videos.

My kids school piloted the “no phone during class time” rule this past year and it worked fine.  Some of the teachers had boxes in the desks for the phones, others just required tj in the bag.  It was fine.

What I’d actually like is for some enterprising student to program an app that allows the kids to know which bathrooms are open on any given day.  That would be a real time saver, to avoid walking a mile plus around the school searching for someplace to pee.

[b]These people saying no phones at lunch in HE seem like they are coming from some la la land world where there is room for the HS to eat lunch in school, and kids are turning in assignments on paper and actually have time to have conversations with their teachers,  kids are having nice little conversations at lunch, etc.  [/b]There are much bigger problems in McPS than phones at lunchtime for HS kids.  [/quote]
Those kinds of things have substantially increased at my kids' school since the all-day ban was enacted.  :thumbup:  Love it!! [/quote]

Is your kid at one of the 3000 kid high schools?  Without phones there’s almost no way to even find your friends to have a nice chit chat at lunch. It’s an absolute zoo.   Mine will text friends things like “heading to the math review session at lunch if you want to join” or “want to meet at chipotle after school to fo over homework” or whatever.  The phones don’t even work in most of the classrooms because there no signal.  They are mostly using them at lunch when they are off campus or maybe during a passing period when they happen to pass near a door.

I just think the parent advocacy groups are being unreasonable.  If the issue is screen addiction, the kids are just going to be watching videos on their chromebooks.  My older HS student had an iPad they used to organize all their class notes … is that better or worse than a phone?  It’s really just a big phone!  It was totally critical to being able to manage and balance their assignments and notes for class.

For MS and ES, stronger bans make sense.  [/quote]
Wow. That's a sad tale. How did kids a mere 20 years ago ever survive?! Were they all aimlessly wandering around their schools with no way to "chit chat" at lunch? How did they ever make plans? No possible way to be able to manage and balance their assignments and notes for class without a $500 tablet? [/quote]

We had pay phones. [/quote]

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