Editor’s note:
The text of this conversation has been edited for length and clarity, but the main ideas of the conversation were maintained by the editorial staff.
Gio’s lines appear in bold. Mrs. Young’s lines appear in plain text.
We are at the halfway mark right now. And as we grow with this new system and the idea of no phones, are there any plans to review or adjust it during the summer?
I don’t know if there are any plans to adjust. The law is the law, and that’s not going away, and that’s not changing. I do think that every year, we as the administrative team sit down in the summer to talk about orientations and how those things get rolled out.
We’ve tried to be sensitive to the fact that if somebody is a neat nick and they’ve kept their Yonder pouch perfectly clean and put together, we don’t want to then issue them a different one the next year that someone did not have as much care for. So,yes, that adds a whole other layer of, you know, when you’ve got 1000 students to get through, and you’re distributing Chromebooks and Yonder pouches, and you know all of those things. So we’re always looking for more efficient ways to do that. So that I’m sure I will definitely be talking about. Out over the summer
So, really, you know, we get a lot of guidance from the company. They actually did an on-site visit here at the high school in the fall, kind of watched the procedures, talked with us about what was going well, so they could give us recommendations, and they actually.
How is the school supporting students who need to use their phones for emergencies, medical reasons, and accessibility needs?
So for emergencies, we actually installed a new phone here in the main office that’s outside the secretary’s area, because students used to just come and ask the secretaries, but we said they can’t conduct their business. So we have that phone, students come in, they say, “Can I call my mom for such and such a reason?” That’s fine.
If there are accessibility issues, like a student using their phone for diabetes monitoring or heart monitors, there are provisions in the law that allow us to have a special pouch. So it’s actually a Velcro pouch that they have. And basically, they’re still expected to keep it away, but there are times when we want students at the high school level to be able to monitor their own health. And to be able to do that, we want to make sure that they’re not abusing that and then having that extend to other things.
And then, have there been any challenges enforcing the policies, and if so, what kind of measures do you like to take, such as suspension or such?
So we do have progressive consequences for each time that students commit an offense.
There’s a first offense, second offense, similar to how we have our driving. One of the provisions of this law is that students cannot be suspended for having a cell phone. However, they can be suspended for insubordination or disrespect. So it all kinda depends on how they handle the situation at the moment.
So in terms of just having the cell phone and not keeping it locked away. That really goes through a progression of a warning, a call home to a parent. We have some pieces in place. You’ve probably seen them. If kids forget their pouch, that kind of goes to an offense, but at the attendance office, they have the little pouches that we used to use last year. That’s where they surrender it. They put it in there and they get it at the end of the day. So in a sense that that’s a bit of a consequence because if you have open campus at lunch [ed: the student can’t access it at lunch].
How is the compliance of students being monitored? And what types of incidences related to phone use have occurred, if any?
At the high school level, I think kids are old enough to kind of internalize that they really don’t need us hollering at them besides the first couple of days to say, here’s the procedure. When kids don’t follow that, then we follow the sequence of progressive discipline.
That’s on the document that we kind of handed out at the beginning of the school year. It’s also posted on the website. So there’s information there. And it’s kind of a straight line like, is this your first offense, second offense? If a student is in a classroom and their ringtone goes off, that would be considered an offense because it’s supposed to be off. A lot of kids don’t realize that, or they’re pulling out their earbuds and leaving the phone on in their pocket. That’s an offense too. So like, there have been growing pains with that because we focus mostly on the Apple Watches and the phones.
And we’re really not trying to do a gotcha thing, but we are, you know, cognizant of when teachers have things happen in their classroom. They’re sending the kid down to the AP office, they’re addressing it, they’re contacting parents. It’s a lot of time, you know, out of our schedule to kind of manage that environment as well, communicate with parents. That’s an important piece for us to make sure that parents are in the know.
There have been parent complaints to provide feedback or raise concerns about the policy. There was a task force that was created, and it did have representatives of students, parents, and staff who developed these policies. Information can be shared with us. But I think the difference is that this isn’t just a Vestal policy, which a lot of people think that it is. They say, such and such a school district is doing it this way, or they’re doing it that way. I can’t speak for other school districts, but what I can say is this is what the law requires. Do you have to have pouches? No, but you do have to be able to demonstrate that you’re enforcing the law.
I remember when cell phones first became smartphones, you know, really first started getting pushed out, and they seemed like a great idea. And very quickly it has become an addiction. That’s the concern that I have, is giving kids every opportunity to not get sucked in and not have their mental Wellness impacted or their sense of their own self-worth be impacted by.
Kind of is building off of this. Is there anything that might happen in the future that could directly, because you’re never going to kill bullying completely, but you could lessen it in a way? So, is there something that you guys may be thinking about doing in the future?
You can get along with anyone; you just find the good parts. And if there are parts that you don’t like about someone or you don’t wanna be, you leave that part alone. You don’t need to criticize them; you don’t need to engage in that. But you can still be someone’s partner for, you know, class, time, activity, and you don’t have to sit with them at lunch every day. I guess it’s a way to kind of evolve into an understanding that you can interact with all different kinds of people, but they don’t all have to be your friends.
Because I feel like the mean-spirited behavior doesn’t really represent Vestal as a whole, really, at all.
I wouldn’t say that it’s broad-based, but I do feel like where we would get complaints about. So, so and so sent me threats on Snapchat and, oh, they said this to me, or they were whispering over there. They looked at me, and you know, that kind of stuff. So it’s just kind of morphed into a different form because I’ve known with Snapchat, you can’t actually show this kind of thing happening. But when it’s face-to-face, you really have to have a very big trust system. In that person actually saying the correct things, not just trying to get the person in trouble, yes.
