Setting the right tone
For her 13th birthday, Danielle Foster received her most-prized possession: a Motorola cellular phone with a hot pink cover.
“Some people will declare you a geek if you don’t have a cell phone,” the Salk Middle School eighth-grader said.
But her mom didn’t buy her the phone so the teen could look cool. Foster said her mom bought it “mainly for safety reasons.”
“So she knows where I am,” Foster said.
Parents say wireless phones are a way to stay connected with their children, especially if there were an emergency like the school shootings making recent headlines.
But school districts across the country continue to struggle with balancing modern technology with the need to keep order and optimize learning in the classroom. Schools have had to decide whether the devices are a fad or a luxury that should be prohibited or a necessity for some families.
Across the nation, school districts have taken heat for banning cell phones in schools in an attempt to deal with the discipline issues that come with them, including cheating, harassment and cyber bullying. New York City Public Schools recently prohibited cell phones and was sued by a parent who said the ban violated her child’s rights.
“There are legitimate uses why parents want their kids to have them,” said Brian Melody, principal at Woodridge Elementary School in north Spokane. “They want to be able to contact them before and after school, keep track of them.”
Statistics show more parents want that connection.
According to Consumer Reports, more than one-third of 11- to 14-year-olds have their own cell phones, and marketers continue to target younger and younger children. Disney recently came out with a line of mobile phones for 8- to 12-year-olds, and a company called Firefly makes a phone that has three buttons – one for mom, one for dad and one for 911.
“Sixth-graders come to us with them. A few years ago, it was a status symbol; now it’s part of the general uniform – backpack, jeans, tennis shoes and cell phones,” said Gordon Grassi, principal at North Pines Middle School in the Central Valley School District.
Policies regarding cell phones vary among local school districts.
Central Valley prohibits them in all schools during the school day, including at lunch. But most Spokane high schools allow them, except in class or wherever it would “disrupt the learning process,” said Emmett Arndt, district administrator. Spokane middle and elementary school students must leave phones in lockers or backpacks until the end of the day.
“At the end of the school day as kids are walking off campus, they pop up like you wouldn’t believe,” said Mark Gorman, Salk principal.
In Post Falls, the district is looking to update its policy on all electronic devices, including music players and other types of MP3 players. The policy will include language that allows gadgets and phones at school, but not during class time.
“We’re just trying to keep up with what’s current,” said Superintendent Jerry Keane.
Despite all the rules, schools occasionally have to deal with cell phones in the classroom. Students forget that they have them in their pocket and they go off during class, which often leads to confiscation.
Rebecca Padilla, a 14-year-old Salk eighth-grader who has had her own cell phone since she was 10, said she texts in class sometimes four times a day without being caught.
“Not yet, anyway,” Padilla said.
While Salk administrators said they rarely have to take a phone away, recently a cell phone confiscated from a student was heard ringing from inside a closet in the student office.
School district officials and resource officers also spend a great deal of time dealing with cyber bullying and harassment through text messages and camera phones.
Recently, officials at University High School discovered a pair of teen boys had taken pictures of another female student’s breasts over the summer off school grounds and kept the photos on their cell phones. The girl consented to the pictures. The two boys now face charges of having sexually explicit material.
“The bigger issue is theft,” said Jeff Bengtson, principal at Canfield Middle School in Coeur d’Alene, where the phones and other devices must stay in backpacks until the end of the day.
Phones and personal music players can cost more than $300, not to mention the monthly bills associated with them. And parents are often the ones picking up the tab.
Samantha Cook, an eighth-grader at North Pines Middle School, said she recently sent text messages and talked to her friends on her cell phone to the tune of $1,500 – in one month. Samantha said her dad will pay the bill, and she’s lost her phone for a month. “I’ll be more careful now. I don’t want to lose it again.”
Her friend Allison Phillips, also an eighth-grader at North Pines, had a similar issue. She racked up a $200 phone bill and mom had “a talk” with her.
Other parents have held the line, unwilling to fork over the cash for something that may be lost, stolen or broken.
Spokane resident Gordon Cooper told his two sons, ages 13 and 12, that he would buy them cell phones, but only after a test run with fake plastic phones purchased at a dollar store. The boys, Michael, in the sixth grade at St. Matthew’s Lutheran School, and Jesse, a seventh-grader at Northwood Middle School in Mead, were required to carry the plastic phones at all times without damaging them.
“The whole idea was to see if they can be responsible enough to maintain a real phone,” Cooper said. “It lasted two weeks before (the fake phones) got broken or destroyed.” His youngest son left the phone in the bottom of his backpack.
“He tends to drop it and all the books crushed it,” Cooper said.
Some parents tell students if they want a cell phone, they have to pay for it themselves.
Cameron Rose saved up his money and bought his phone last year when he was a sixth-grader.
“I got my cell phone because other kids had them at school. I like to text message a lot because it costs less than minutes, and I have a pay-as-you-go phone,” said the Freeman Middle School seventh-grader.
Like many other schools, Freeman doesn’t allow cell phone use during the school day, but Cameron takes his cell phone with him so he can let his parents know where he’s going after school.
Cameron said he only uses the Internet to go to the Virgin Mobile Web site to download ring tones and games. He has special ring tones that let him know when his mom or dad is calling, but has too many people in his phone book to assign everyone their own ring tone. He said more and more of his friends are getting phones.
“Kids really want one of those new slim phones,” Rose said. “Those phone companies are really dragging them in.”
Staff writer Meghann Cuniff contributed to this report.