The School Committee voted unanimously on Monday night to adopt a comprehensive, district-wide cell phone and internet-enabled device policy.
The new policy centers around pouches (created by Yondr) in which students keep their phones, locked and safe, to avoid the distraction and commotion that typically come with phone use and social media.
“Over the last two or three years, we’ve seen the impact of the phones on students, both with mental health and cognition,” Rob Greenfield, Newton North High School history teacher and digital literacy coordinator who helped shape the policy, said. “It’s had this really gravitational pull on their attention.”
Under the new policy:
- Students in the elementary and middle schools will put their phones in the pouches for the entire school day.
- High School students will only have to keep their phones stored away, not in the pouches, and only during academic time.
- There are exceptions for students who need phone apps for their health care (kids with diabetes, for example).
- In all schools and for all students, phones are prohibited from restrooms and locker rooms, and students are not allowed to photograph or video anyone without consent.
- NPS-issued Chromebooks will no longer have social media apps or games installed.
- Social media and games will be filtered out of the schools’ wifi.
- The School Committee will review the policy every year.
School Committee Chair Chris Brezski added that the committee will engage in ongoing outreach and education about the program to make sure the district stays committed.
“This really is going to only be successful is everyone’s moving in the same direction,” he said.
Out of sight, out of mind?
Day Middle School and Newton North High School tested a pilot program with phone pouches last school year, and in the spring the City Council added funding for expansion of the program to more schools.
“The distractions and the difficulties if internet-enabled devices in the pockets of all of our children have been quite challenging over the last several years in particular,” Superintendent Anna Nolin, who was once a middle school teacher, said at a press conference marking the opening week of school. “Especially post-COVID, where students were often connected to their devices all the time, and it was their only sort of socialization.”
Nolin said that feedback from teachers at both of the city’s high schools show it’s been difficult for them to wrangle students’ attention in the classroom and monitor which students are on their phones and which students are not.
This school year, the district is providing cell phone pouches to the high schools to store phones during class time, and Nolin said the district would evaluate the impacts of the program in the high schools later.
Getting teachers and staff used to the program is taking time. Kate Shaughnessy is an English teacher at Newton North High School, and that school started using the pouches this past winter with help from a grant.
“It was a little bit of an adjustment and there maybe wasn’t enough time to strategize and share what worked and what didn’t work,” Shaughnessy said. “I feel like that was almost like a scrimmage—I’m also a coach—and now it’s game time.”
Newton North math teacher Sam Shoutis said he’s already noticed a difference with the phone pouches.
“It’s been remarkably easy this year with my two senior classes,” Shoutis said. “They all did it, they didn’t complain, and it hasn’t been a problem in any of my classes so far. It’s really nice to take the phones away and get a chance to talk to them [the students] myself and to have them to talk to each other, too.”
In a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 72% of high school students said they were distracted by phone use at school.