Email with Katie Joseph- RSU 1 Assistant Superintendent 7/31/2024

1.      How are you managing cell phone use on the school bus?

There have been many issues with cell phone use on the bus, but we have a shortage of bus drivers, which means we can’t have an additional adult monitoring cell phones. Our ban of phones is from when students enter the school building until when they leave the building.  Pouches require magnet stations to lock/unlock and this is not feasible for a bus situation at this time.

2.      How do you respond to the argument that high school is a crucial time for students to learn to manage their devices? We don't typically just hand a teenager the keys to a car and say, "Good luck." Our school board has emphasized that they want students to develop responsible cell phone skills during high school before they leave for college. How do you address this?

Frontal lobes are not developed in adolescent brains, so no matter how hard we try to teach guidelines, with something so addictive, it is an uphill battle.  Students learn independence and management of themselves and their things/devices during non-school hours and school cannot be everything for every student.  Students will still be taught digital citizenship and safety around the internet and devices, but it will no longer physically be involved in managing these devices.

3.      How do you respond to administrators or parents who argue that students need their phones for organizing tasks, tracking assignments, and note-taking? The only justification I see is for using phones to update calendars with assignment due dates. How do you handle this concern?

Our students have 1:1 laptops starting in grade K which have all the features of a smartphone through Google - calendar, task lists, drive docs - that allows for all of these needs.

4.      What about parents who want their kids to have their phones (perhaps to check in during the day). One board member said it seems like we are telling parents what to do or how to parent their kids. Any counter argument to this?

They can call the office if they need to speak with their students and the student can be called down.  "Checking in" during school is a habit people have gotten into because they can, not because they need to.  Pre-smartphones, parents and students functioned with communication through the office and so we are just going back to that model.