Students in Spokane Public Schools may have to follow slightly different cell phone policies when they go back to class in a few weeks.
Under the rules announced this week, students in elementary and middle school would only be allowed to use their phones before and after school.
Meanwhile high school students would only be limited to non-instructional time — meaning passing periods and lunch are fair game for phone use.
It might take a moment for some students to adjust to the policy changes, SPS Superintendent Adam Swinyard said.
“There's going to be some turbulence associated with this,” he said at a press briefing Tuesday. “We have kids walking the halls of our classrooms and all they ever know is being able to have their device and being able to check it with quite a bit of freedom. So this is going to be hard.”
While some teachers have made use of cell phones and other devices for classroom instruction in the past, such uses wouldn’t be permitted under the proposed policy.
“We're giving up some power of a tool in a classroom knowing that what we get in return in creating safer spaces where kids can be more authentically engaged,” said Swinyard. “There's a tradeoff, and we feel that what we're getting is exponentially greater than what we're giving up.”
The district is cognizant that there’s no way to create a rule without exceptions, Swinyard said, so students will still be able to keep their phones on them all day and use them in emergencies.
“We think that's part of the common sense approach,” he said.
Swinyard emphasized that the rules are meant to be “developmentally appropriate” and that school staff will “work together on this as a community to help our kids adjust to time and place. There's a time and place I can have my phone out and look at it.”
“Consistency matters, and context matters,” he said. “And so our administrators are trained and do an incredible job making sure they're being consistent, while at the same time knowing there's context. A student may have something going on in their life that is prompting them to check their phone more often. And we would want to know and understand that.”
Another proposed change would have students retrieve devices that have been confiscated, rather than asking parents or guardians to come to the school in every instance of rule-breaking.
“Schools have tried lots of different strategies over the years, where if you lost your phone, every time you lost it, then the parent had to come at the end of the day,” Swinyard said. “That can create a huge barrier for some families, transportation or work.”
The school board will do a preliminary reading of the policy at its meeting tonight.
Board President Nikki Lockwood said the board will vote on the policy at the next meeting on August 28.
