DOVER — The Capital School District board of education approved a revision to its mobile device policy during a meeting Thursday.
The district is emphasizing that phones and other mobile equipment must be turned off and out of sight during instructional times for all grade levels. The changes named last week make those rules more efficient, officials say, with the biggest alterations coming to procedures. The original guidelines were implemented in 2015.
However, a sticking point for some board members was the removal of wordage that effectively also takes away a teacher’s ability to seize phones and other mobile equipment.
“There was some concern about whether we really want to remove the teacher’s ability to confiscate, and I asked that same question,” said member Tony DePrima, adding that Benjamin Wells, the district’s chief information officer noted that “confiscating the phone can cause more problems and more disruption than just allowing the student to ... keep it (on) and then exercise the directions in terms of the discipline.”
Mr. DePrima also inquired about how an instructor should handle a situation during which a student is loudly using his or her phone and will not stop. Interim superintendent Dr. Victoir Cahoon replied that a dean or administrator would then need to step in.
“The goal is to try to minimize the potential conflict between our teaching staff and students,” Dr. Cahoon added.
Meanwhile, board member Chanda Jackson recommended training for teachers, so they know what to do when a child is not complying.
Further, it was noted during the meeting that some students may need their phones for medical reasons, which is an exception under the revised rules. The policy reads that the use of a device must be prescribed by a doctor, and documentation must be submitted to administrators.
Disciplinary actions for violations are specified, too — punishments that were missing from the original. For a first offense, a student will get a verbal warning, notes in the iTracker system (software used to monitor students) and parental contact. On the second offense, he or she will receive a detention, a documented referral and another parent contact. For the third, there will be an in-school suspension, a documented referral and a parental contact once again.
The policy also states that any individual who records a physical or verbal altercation may be subject to further discipline.
The way the regulations cover age groups has changed, as well. Previously, there were different sets of rules for kindergarten through sixth grades and seventh through 12th grades, but now, the split is kindergarten through eighth grade and ninth grade through 12th grade. This means that seventh and eighth graders will now be subject to the younger group’s more restrictive rules — for example, they will need to be off their phones for the entire day, whereas high schoolers can use theirs during noninstructional periods.
“The whole purpose of this, updating this policy, is to reduce the disruptions and the distractions in the classroom. We need to focus on student learning. We need to focus on the learning environment. And we believe that, with this updated policy, it will lead to fewer distractions in the classroom, fewer disruptions in the classroom and an environment that is more conducive to teachers being able to teach and students being able to learn,” Dr. Cahoon said.
“So, it’s not to be punitive to students or anything like that. (It’s) to really address the learning environment, and we do appreciate the board’s receptiveness to this potential policy update.”
The revision passed unanimously Thursday and will go into effect when the academic year begins Tuesday. The full policy is available at capital.k12.de.us .
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