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A week after Fairfax County Public Schools unveiled a cellphone storage pilot program for middle schoolers, school board members in the Virginia school district said a similar program will be piloted in high schools.
Nine high schools have volunteered to participate in the program, School Board Member Kyle McDaniel said, though a list of them hasn’t yet been made public. He’s still waiting for the full list, he said. Justice and Falls Church high schools will be in included, according to School Board Member Ricardy Anderson’s newsletter.
Students at those schools will place their cellphones in either a hanging pouch or storage locker during class time. They’ll still be allowed to use them during lunch and between classes, which is the school division’s policy for the older students.
School districts all across Virginia are working to crack down on students’ cellphone use, in part to comply with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order calling for “cellphone-free education” in public schools.
Board members in Fairfax County directed Superintendent Michelle Reid to create a pilot program for the fall. The county announced students at seven middle schools will put their phones in “Yondr” pouches when they start the school day, and the magnetic pouch won’t be unlocked until the end of the day.
Middle schools in the county have a bell-to-bell ban on cellphone use. Some educators were surprised that the county’s pilot didn’t initially include high schools.
“What we’re trying to do with piloting it in these nine high schools is get some consistency to figure out what the best method is,” McDaniel told WTOP. “Is it the hanging pouch? Is it the storage locker? And to get the feedback, frankly, from the teachers and the administrators on which one of those tools is going to be the most effective.”
Teachers that use either the hanging organizers or lockers have said they’re effective, McDaniel said, but, “you’re always going to have outliers. There’s always going to be someone that doesn’t want to follow the rules. We certainly understand that, but generally speaking, the feedback that I’ve heard is both of those have been effective tools.”
Once the details of the middle school program came out, McDaniel said teachers, parents and other constituents suggested “that we needed to test some different solutions inside high schools.”
Since the school division first announced the pilot program, most people have expressed positive feedback, McDaniel said. But some have expressed concerns about students who need the devices for medical reasons or educational accommodations, which he said are exceptions to the storage rules.
“Folks have raised some concerns that I know our staff is trying to work their way through, safety being one of them,” McDaniel said.
On its website for the middle school program, the county said anyone who needs to reach a student during class time can call the front office.
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