According to Superintendent David Mouser, District 87 is not considering a district-wide ban on cell phones for students during school hours, as districts across the country are currently experimenting with such bans starting this fall.
Unit 5 is currently considering introducing a ban on telephones in its schools. The school board had questions calls on the government to consider such a policy.
The Current policy In both Unit 5 and District 87, the policy is to leave decisions about cell phone use to individual teachers or building administrators. Some confiscate phones temporarily. Others negotiate with students to allow them to use them only in the last few minutes of class. Still others give up altogether and just live with the phones in their classrooms.
According to Mouser, this situation in the 87th District is unlikely to change anytime soon, but a phone ban could be considered in the future.
“That’s a conversation we’re having,” Mouser told WGLT at Wednesday’s school board meeting. “And I think there are obviously a lot of schools in our area that are trying that. And we want to see how that resonates with people.”
Mouser said there is a conflict between “two schools of thought” regarding cell phones in schools: They could ban them or “try to teach responsible use.”
He said the current policy at Bloomington Junior High School confirms that cell phones must be kept in lockers and that if confiscated, they must be picked up by a parent at the end of the school day – not the student themselves. At Bloomington High School, on the other hand, students are only expected to put their cell phones away during class, and it is up to individual teachers to enforce that rule.
Mouser said the phones are “always a distraction,” but qualified that they only pose a hindrance in the classroom “depending on how they are used.”
“But I’ll tell you that as a teacher, I would just tell students, ‘You don’t use your phones right now,'” he added. “And I’ll monitor that behavior in the classroom. And that’s what our teachers do really well, but at the same time, they can be a distraction.”
“They can also be beneficial for many children,” Mouser added, pointing to the use of calendar and note-taking apps.
“But if you ask Dave Mouser what he thinks about cell phones in schools, I’m not a fan at all,” he concluded.
When asked about research by social psychologists on the harmful effects of smartphones on students’ mental health and attention span, Mouser said, “To me, this is a societal issue, not a school issue.”
“It’s become such a big part of our society. How can we as a school solve this societal problem of distraction from cell phones and social media and everything that comes with it?” he said. “Or should we try to teach responsible use and learn how to monitor that in a school environment?”
