VACATION – When the Granite School District began school again on Wednesday, a new rule was implemented regarding personal devices on campus.

From kindergarten through eighth grade, the new rule means that students are not allowed to carry personal devices on school property from bell to bell. In grades 9 through 12, personal devices are not allowed during class, but flexibility is allowed during recess and lunch periods.

At Olympus High School, the rule is already in place to prove this.

“We felt like the kids were just spending so much time on screens. They all had their own Chromebooks. They all had phones and they just weren’t as active with each other,” said Melissa Stringham, a council member for the Granite School District.

At Evergreen Junior High, the policy requiring phones to be put away during the school day was adopted at the beginning of the school year in April 2021, according to Stringham.

The school had a head start, so to speak, because now all schools will follow this example.

“When you come to Evergreen and walk down the hallway or go out to lunch, the kids are talking to each other. They’re playing football. They’re playing soccer. They’re having fun,” said Ryan Shaw, principal of Evergreen Junior High.

He said his staff have seen the rule pay off and help mitigate other problems.

“There’s less bullying. There are fewer behavioral problems that we can communicate to parents, so it’s mostly about communication. It’s about talking to them. It’s about showing them why we’re doing this and the value of the zero tolerance policy to the school,” Shaw said.

Shaw said that as with any new rule, it took some time to get used to not having to take out their phones, but that students eventually got used to it.

“So we’re not the cell phone police at all… They’re on the phone when they walk in the door. We greet them. We talk to the kids when they get here. You know, we remind them to put their phone away when it rings… After the first year, there was actually about a 36% drop in the number of phones we were taking away. And by the second year of implementation, we were down from that initial number to about 60%. So our teachers really don’t have to worry about that much anymore,” Shaw said.

Stringham says the pushback she’s often heard comes from parents who worry about not being able to reach their children. The Granite School District said accommodations can be made for students with disabilities or medical conditions to ensure appropriate communication between the student and parent during school hours.

Contribute: Mary Culbertson, KSL TV