Middletown District maintains cellphone restrictions in new school year.
This fall, Middletown School District is continuing its ban on cell phones at school given the positive outcomes observed on campuses, according to Superintendent Amy Creeden.
The district was one of the first in the area to start such a policy last year.
“We noticed changes in classrooms that kids were engaging at a different level and asking questions that they hadn’t,” Ms. Creeden told The Epoch Times on Sept. 8.
“We also experienced a shift in more relaxed spaces such as the cafeteria,” she said, adding that the district provided resources like board games on-site to help students enjoy each other’s company and develop personal connections off social media.
Though it is too early to tell if the policy improves test scores, Ms. Creeden was confident that a more engaged student body would contribute to overall academic performance.
“We believe very firmly in all of the initial reasons why we dug into this, and we believe that these are the best decisions for our scholars.”
Cellphone Policy
Last fall, the district started a new policy of no student cellphone use during the school day, including lunch breaks and passing periods, following a half-year experiment at Mohagen and Twin Towers Middle School.
Months later, the district launched a new partnership with a cellphone pouch company called Yondr to help some 2,700 high school students transition to the new cellphone policy.
Ms. Creeden said at the time that middle and high school students had a more challenging time adapting than younger students because they were more used to being always on the phone.
Per the policy, high schoolers must keep their phones inside Yondr pouches during the school day; the pouches come with special magnetic locks that cannot be opened manually.
For emergency contact needs, staff members will help students open the pouches through unlocking stations.
The district is monitoring the outcome of the pouch program and considering extending it to the two middle schools, Ms. Creeden said.
Nearby Newburgh School District also launched a new cellphone restriction policy last fall and expanded the Yondr pouch program to middle and high schools this year.
Refinements and Adjustments
The cellphone policy has also met with its share of parental concerns and practical challenges.
“There is a sense now that families need to have access to their children whenever, wherever,” Ms. Creeden said. “So, the idea of saying that we are putting cell phones away and that young people won’t have access to their personal devices poses a bit of challenge.”
She said the district used multiple virtual info sessions and in-person town halls to inform parents about the policy, including eight alone this summer.
“We provide the ‘why’ behind what we were doing and make ourselves abundantly available to families that wanted to talk about the ‘why,’” she said. “[So that we can say] here is your feedback, here is how we digested that feedback, and here are the actions we took as a result of it.”
A major parental concern evolves around student cellphone access during emergency events, to which Ms. Creeden responded that the district had several safety protocols in place to protect students in emergencies.
They include fire extinguishers and bleed kits in hallways, plus emergency kits in classrooms with medical-grade scissors that can cut open the pouches, she said.
A new panel of high school students is also being considered to help the administration get their perspectives on the policy.
“So we could understand from all and know where we need to dial in and tighten things up or shore up the process,” she said.
‘Safe Enough to Try’
Ms. Creeden said the cellphone policy rollout reflects a ‘safe enough to try’ mentality, which allows her administration to thoughtfully try out new things to move the district forward.
“We say that we create a plan, we get it to a spot where it feels safe enough to try it, we implement it, and w
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