Phones at school: Good for safety?

(WJW) — As the country wraps its collective minds around yet another tragic mass school shooting, the conversation on what to do with the best way to connect to our kids, their phones, during an emergency comes back around, too.

Ken Trump, a national expert on school safety, has watched as the debate on cell phone use in schools has raged on for years.

“On one hand, cell phones are a disruption to the learning environment. They add emotional stress and can actually take kids attention away from important direction from adults during an emergency situation,” Trump said.

But in the time, Trump has struggled to find a one-stop shop, a fix-it-all solution that works for everyone.

“Cell phones are also an integral part of the day-to-day life of kids and family. (Especially for) after-school activities,” he said.

Currently, in Ohio, there’s not an all-out ban on cell phone use in schools.

However, all schools in Ohio are required by law to adopt policies that limit student cell phone use as much as possible, especially in the classroom.

For Trump, an all-out ban on a tool that can help in this kind of awful situation doesn’t make much sense. However, he also said free reign on phone use doesn’t make much sense either.

His idea is less all-or-nothing talk and more solution talk.

“When you are in the middle of an active threat, it’s an emotional situation. There is ambiguity, anxiety. The rules tend to go out the window. The plan tends to go out the window. It’s the conversations that happen before the crisis that really help during the crisis,” he said.

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