The White County School Board Thursday decided the new state law regarding cell phone usage will not prompt them to make any changes to their current cell phone usage policy.
White County School Director Kurt Dronebarger said the school already bans cell phone usage during instruction time. Dronebarger said he is not hearing that the policy needs adjusting.
“Do cell phones cause disruptions? Absolutely. Is it a distraction sometimes? Yes,” Dronebarger said. “But I’m not hearing overwhelmingly from the high school and from teachers that they can’t teach class because of cell phone use or inappropriate cell phone use. So, our policy doesn’t necessarily have to change according to this law. We have that already in place.”
White County High School Vice-Principal Amy Hawkins said she does not see a need to change the policy either. Hawkins said of the 700 discipline referrals at the high school last year only 60 were related to violations of the school’s cell phone policy.
“Currently, our policy, our procedure is that students are not allowed to have cell phones in the classroom,” Hawkins said. ” They can have them in the hallways, in the cafeterias. And it’s really, we are not seeing issues with students using them in an inappropriate way during the school day. Does it happen? Yes, but as far as discipline goes, we’ not had a lot of that going on.”
Board Chair Bob Young said he felt good about the current cell phone usage policy and saw no need to change it either. Young said he likes the fact that the school handbook has a section about phone usage.
“There is, in a sense, a loose contract there between the students and our district that this is what we’re allowing,” Young said. “And that expectation is that you don’t break that contract. And when you do that, the consequences, and obviously, we have those listed.”
