August 19 – School starts this week in many districts across the region, and over the course of the summer, many people have talked about and actually called for a ban on cell phones in schools at the start of the school year.

According to a recent study, 75% of Generation Z say social media has a negative impact on their mental health.

According to the survey, it only takes 38 minutes to feel bad on social media – and many people spend many hours on these apps.

Pat Ryan of NewsTalk 103.7FM urged: “Get the phones out of their hands for the school day. If it works across Pennsylvania, New York and Los Angeles, we shouldn’t wait for it. Let’s get going.”

Attorney Clint Barkdoll noted, “Frankly, there is no argument for allowing this unrestricted use of the phones. I noticed I was on the Chambersburg School District website over the weekend and there are a lot of openings again as we start the new school year, and that has to be difficult. But in their welcome newsletter, an entire page is devoted to statements about restrictions or stricter measures on cell phone use in schools. They are not banned. There has been a policy for a long time, but it is difficult to enforce. The newsletter reminds families and students that here are the rules. We don’t want you to use these during the school day, but whether or not that will be enforced remains to be seen. It seems like every week there is new research coming out that shows the addictive nature of these devices and the very damaging effects on mental health. And once again, we are seeing school districts across the country saying this is just irrefutable. We need to take action to ban these devices.” We don’t even want policies that say you should put them in place but not use them, because we know from experience that doesn’t work. Kids always find workarounds. But with school starting again this week and a school board not already passing the ban, I think it’s unlikely that will happen this school year.”

Ryan said: “We could still tackle it in January.”

“Sure,” Barkdoll confirmed.

Michele Jansen of NewsTalk 103.7M said, “Hopefully the pressure will just continue to grow and hopefully it will get even greater as more school districts do this. We know that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and inconveniences of not having your child on a cell phone all day. I don’t know how parents can justify that.”

Since school starts this week, let’s also look at the changes in Title IX.

Jansen explained, “Originally, it was about protecting women and allowing women’s sports in schools. That was one of the main reasons Title IX was created in the first place. Now, as predicted, when the Supreme Court made the unwise decision to include gender identity in a workplace issue, it was expanded. The Biden administration took that decision and expanded it into Title IX, which had nothing to do with the original Supreme Court decision, and they wanted to put all kinds of changes in it that would have enshrined gender identity in schools, in the use of bathrooms, in locker rooms, maybe in sports. That’s a little bit uncertain, but I think if the Harris administration won, that would be enshrined. The use of pronouns, just the imposition of gender ideology into schools.”

Ryan said, “So you’re saying that in Chambersburg or Pennsylvania, a boy can go into a girl’s locker room and change?”

Jansen said, “They’re saying it’s the child’s choice to do whatever they can. You can’t go against it, and the rules should go into effect on August 1st. Many others and I were concerned because Pennsylvania was not one of the 26 states that filed lawsuits that the Supreme Court just blocked and that are now going into effect for those states. But I just found out something amazing: If you belong to certain groups, if a parent for a child in a school district belongs to one of the groups that I’m about to name, then that school district cannot enact these Title IX changes, and those groups are Young America’s Foundation, Female Athletes United, and the third is Mom’s for Liberty. I know Mom’s for Liberty has members in Franklin County, so if there’s only one Mom’s for Liberty member in your school district, you can’t enact these Title IX changes because they’re part of the lawsuit. Now I read a news article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that said, “Oh, there are at least 100 districts in Pennsylvania where Mom’s for Liberty is represented. I think it’s even more, and I think if you’re not, and you don’t agree that gender ideology should be forced on every child from preschool through 12th grade, then go out today and join Mom’s for Liberty or one of the other groups and make sure the school district knows that.”

Ryan said: “Ultimately it comes down to whether your daughter should not be looking in the dressing room, and that is the extreme measure, but it is clearly something that could happen if you don’t want your daughter to see a boy changing in her dressing room.”

Jansen added, “In fact, it’s going even further. They’re lowering the standards for sexual harassment, including on the basis of gender identity. But it’s also getting worse, because it basically means that every kid who says, ‘Oh, I’ve been harassed in almost any way based on my gender or my sexuality,’ now has to have a Title IX coordinator. There has to be all these reports and then all these consequences for every single report of that kind. That’s micromanaging in a way that’s going to make the way they do education harder.”

Barkdoll said, “We should say that even this Supreme Court ruling last week is not a final decision. This was a 5-4 decision. Justice Gorsuch, by the way, joined the liberals on the court in saying that this should remain in effect. But a 5-4 decision that temporarily suspends implementation of these Title IX updates. The overarching goal was to protect against gender discrimination in schools. That is the overarching goal. Now it’s seeping into all of these things that you’re talking about. I think it even affects certain ways that school districts handle student record-keeping, but that’s all on hold. It’s in those 26 states, not Pennsylvania. I wasn’t aware of the aspect that you just mentioned, which is that a parent’s affiliation with one of these groups could also be grounds to just stop implementation in a school district. That’s still unsettled. I mean, the court will have to look at this more fully in its next session, and it looks like the federal government, the Biden administration, may propose new rules that they believe are consistent with what the Supreme Court has now disallowed and that was supposed to go into effect on August 1. So it’s still a very fluid, complicated situation.”