Putnam County Director of Schools Corby King said parents have responded in different ways to the school system’s new mobile device policy.
King said on one hand, parents appreciate the district’s efforts to protect instructional time. King said others are not as excited about the changes, citing safety and communication concerns. King said both of these were accounted for in the decision making process.
“Students will be able to access their phones at the end of the day,” King said. “And these are not signal blocking cases. So, if parents send their student a text or a message during the day about a change on how they’re going to get home in the afternoon, they’ll be able to get that at the end of the day when they unlock their case.”
King said parents can still leave a message for their kids by calling the school office. In addition, King said schedule changes and alerts can be sent through the ParentSquare app, which the school uses to communicate with families.
King said safety concerns have been common among parents, but safety was at the forefront of the decision to adopt the new policy. King said there are detailed safety plans in place, and school faculty has been trained on how to handle emergency situations.
“If we’re in an emergency situation, we want students listening to their teacher, paying attention to their teacher, to the adult who is in the room who have practiced the scenarios and have gone through those,” King said. “And if we’re in that true emergency situation where a student needs to contact a parent, then we’ll be able to unlock the phone so they can access them and do that.”
King said there will likely take time to adapt because everyone is used to instant communication. King said one of the reasons the school system is moving away from this is because the constant notifications can be overwhelming.
“It will take some time to adjust, to know that you’re not going to get that answer right now, right away,” King said. “There’s so many good things that come with technology, but also challenges in how we develop and how we use that. And students really need a little bit of a break from that during the day.”
King said he encourages parents to be patient in adjusting to this policy. He said the board did extensive research, and made the decision after consulting other schools. King said not having phones in the classroom has positively effected other schools, and he hopes the same will be true of the new Putnam County policy.
Putnam County students will store cell phones and mobile devices in the clear, plastic, magnetic-locking NuGerm phone cases.
