In Oveta Scott’s classroom at Unity Braxton Middle School in Manassas, Virginia, there’s a strict no-cellphone policy in place.
If something’s wrong or there’s an emergency, Scott allows her students to send a message or make a call directly in front of her, before putting the device away again. If they need to correspond with a parent, they can also send an email using a school-issued device, she said.
It’s easy to tell when a student is using their phone during class, Scott said. They’ll usually try to hide it between their legs.
Even though Scott’s cracking down on phone use in class, students still have it when they go to the bathroom or leave her room. They use their phones to record TikTok videos, she said, and if there’s a fight or some kind of altercation, they’ll record teachers who intervene to try and end it.
Scott can tell her administration that a student used a phone to record something, but the student usually has their phone back the next day. Across the school building, every teacher has a different approach to monitoring students’ cellphone use.
How can teachers and administrators treat this ‘addiction’ issue?
About a week after Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order directing Virginia’s Department of Education to create a policy for cellphone-free schools, a few dozen parents and educators told state Superintendent Lisa Coons that students are addicted, the way some people are to tobacco products, and that phone use needs to be addressed immediately.
But during the first of several listening sessions to help craft the state policy, those same teachers and parents said if teachers and administrators don’t collaborate and work together to implement and enforce whatever the policy is, the plan will almost certainly fail.
“If this is a true order that we can say, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., no phones, it must be put away and here’s the consequence, then it will be awesome,” Scott said.
Youngkin’s order directs Coons and the state’s education department to create a policy that local school divisions will have to be in compliance with by Jan. 1. Some Northern Virginia school districts, including Loudoun and Fairfax counties, have proactively taken steps to address students’ phone use in schools.
The state, Coons said Thursday, is collecting feedback before it forms its policy. Once a draft is out, it’ll solicit another month of feedback this fall before it gets adopted.
‘No cellphone use’: Debating exceptions for classroom enforcement
Youngkin’s executive order tasks education officials with defining what a cellphone-free education looks like. It specifically mentions lockers and pouches as examples of possible ways to implement the idea, and urges the state to address exceptions for students with medical needs.
That’s top of mind for Kim, whose child is diabetic and uses their phone to monitor glucose levels during the school day.
“When there is a notification, we don’t get to pick what time of day that happens,” she said. “It’s not going to be just at lunch, or just in the hallways, or just before or after school, it could very well be in the middle of testing and the middle of instructional time. And so it’s important that my child and all children are made to feel like that’s OK.”
Coons, meanwhile, collected feedback for what rules should be in place for elementary, middle and high schoolers. Many agreed that phones weren’t developmentally appropriate for students to have and use during elementary and middle school, and that there should be strict rules in place for high schoolers.
“I am relieved that the majority of the opinions were what I hoped for, which is no cellphone use,” parent Noelle Stanley said, adding that her kids don’t have phones.
Without administrative support, policy could be ‘a recipe for disaster’
Several teachers said they don’t feel they have support from administrators to enforce a cellphone policy, and that if there aren’t consequences, students will continue to use phones during class.
“If we aren’t going to protect teachers who are actively trying to deal with this in their classroom, it’s just not going to happen, because there’s never going to be enough security guards, there’s never going to be enough whatever staff is sanctioned to do this,” said Sawyer Kressin, who teaches at Osbourn Park High School.
Teachers, Kressin said, should have legal protection for enforcing technology restrictions in their classrooms. At Osbourn Park High, students put their phones in phone boxes. School leaders allowed teachers to set their own policies, “which is a recipe for disaster, because then the kids very quickly learn that there’s nothing admin can do,” she said.
For the first few weeks of school, the approach worked. But then, Kressin said students started saying they left their devices at home, which she learned wasn’t always true.
A longtime educator similarly told Coons that some students have multiple devices, so taking one away isn’t always a significant consequence.
However, some participants urged the state to consider students’ perspectives when putting together the phone policy. Some students are caregivers for their younger siblings because their parents are both at work, one said.
Critics of restrictive cellphone policies argue there needs to be a way for parents or caregivers to correspond with students during the day. But Stanley, a parent, said, “A lot of that can be mitigated by the school. I don’t think everybody has to have a phone to tell their mommy or daddy they’re safe.”
Coons, citing data on the relationship between students’ phone use and anxiety and suicide, described the current situation as a mental health crisis that stems from cellphone addiction and social media use.
“It’s not a colloquialism or an exaggeration, they’re actually addicted, like, physically, they have a problem,” said one Virginia teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak openly. “And if the policy doesn’t include funding for the schools to hire addiction experts, then it’s going to be useless.”
Scott, the Unity Braxton teacher, is eager to see how the state policy is developed and implemented.
“Let’s focus and do our job of learning and teaching,” she said.
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