Student Cell Phones Banned In North Carolina’s Largest School District
At the risk of sounding like the old man in Birkenstocks, sitting on his porch yelling at kids to get off his lawn, I just cannot imagine my mother EVER arguing that I needed to have my cell phone out in class. Now, to be fair, when I was in school, desk top computer labs were state-of-the-art. So, the kind of tech we have today might as well have been aliens landing on the back porch. Stil though, anything that is going to distract from classroom instruction is not a good thing.
Apparently, CMS (Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools) agrees. North Carolina’s largest school district has already had a code of conduct policy on the books regarding cell phones being used in classrooms, but this year, it will be enforced. The crackdown decision comes after multiple incidents last year of fights occurring. Then, the fisticuffs were subsequently posted to social media.
CMS Superintendent Crystal Hill tells WSOC-TV, “Principals have the opportunity to provide flexibility for students to use them during lunch, class change, whenever, but during the instructional day, cellphones should not be used, and that is something that we’re pushing forward.”
The policy states that for a first offense, a student’s phone is to be confiscated and locked up in the office. That all sounds well and good until you hear this. CMS has 184 schools and 142,000 students. That’s roughly 7 times the size of the hometown my wife grew up in. Depending on cell phone usage and policy enforcement, it’s conceivable that CMS might need to build extra facilities and hire extra personnel just to handle this.
Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools’ Code of Conduct also states that students caught gaming on personal devices, or their Chromebooks will receive additional disciplinary consequences to having their device confiscated.
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