Virginia’s Department of Education released a draft policy Thursday that aims to make schools cell phone free for nearly the whole school day. One school in Richmond got ahead of the curve and limited cell phone use in schools earlier this year.
“Kids will rise to your expectations, you just gotta have expectations,” Inett Dabney, principal at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Richmond’s East End and she was in charge when the school went cell phone free in January.
“It was tough, you know, just trying to get the message across, if we remove the cell phone from you and you can focus on the classroom, your instruction can increase, you’re going to learn and you’re going to enjoy the class more,” Dabney told Radio IQ.
Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order for a state-wide cell phone free learning policy in July. The Department of Education released their draft model policy Thursday. It’s now set for feedback from the public before schools are expected to implement similar or more stringent policies starting in 2025.
MLK’s program was part of a Richmond Public Schools pilot which gave a handful of schools the chance to use pouches that are sealed by teachers when students enter the building.
Dabney said the program went well, with preliminary test scores suggesting it helped.
But it wasn’t easy. The principal said students pushed back, with some figuring out how to pop the pouch locks, once they realized the policy was there to stay. But working with everyone involved can help relieve some of the pressure.
“You can’t do this without buy-in from the kids, the parents and the staff cause it's going to be disastrous,” Dabne said.
Enforcement worked as a four-strike system - first a warning, then a call home to a student's parents, and finally a request for the parents to keep the cell phone at home entirely.
Notably the pilot avoided punishments that would see kids removed from classrooms. Renesha Parks is the Chief Wellness Officers at Richmond Public Schools. She worked with the company that made the cell phone pouches to help develop the pilot.
She said the pilot practicing restorative punishment, with some of the biggest offenders ending up in on-on-one conversations that, in some cases, led to referrals for mental health services.
“Our students come as they are, but they still have lives outside of school,” Parks said.
And as RPS moves away from the pilot and into Youngkin's new phone-free world, she's hoping to get feedback from those involved before any division policy is approved in December.
“We're really interested in hearing from our families and students so that whatever policy we put in place everyone is aware of the expectations and knows what’s to happen if someone violates the policy,” Parks said.
MLK will stay in their cell-phone free pilot through the first semester with a new policy, in line with the new state guidelines, expected in 2025.
The state's draft policy is up for public review before approval expected in September. All schools are expected to meet or exceed that policy shortly there after.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
