Difference Makers: Middle Schools Salk and Flett, trailblazers for school phone bans

Spokane Public Schools is on the cutting edge of school cellphone policy reform in Washington. But before the district issued a sweeping limitation on cellphone use in its 57 schools, staff at two of them blazed the trail.

A year before the district change, staff at Flett and Salk middle schools noticed their kids struggling to engage with each other post-COVID-19 pandemic, favoring the screens they’d come to rely on during school closures.

During fall 2023, the combined 1,200 students at Flett and Salk embarked on the uncharted waters of cellphone prohibitions at their respective schools.

“Kids still need boundaries,” Flett interventionist Amanda Connelly said. “They’re big, but their brains are still kid brains, even in middle school.”

Kids were barred from using their phones during school hours, except during lunch, the first year at Flett. At the head of the 2024 school year, the rest of the district followed suit with a policy change that prohibits use during school, except between classes and during lunch for high schoolers.

The change is relatively novel for the area, though the Reardan-Edwall School District cracked down on phone use on its two campuses in 2022.

Armed with data and research condemning screen time and the negative effects on developing brains, staff opted to control what they could by cracking down on phone use in their schools’ walls.

“It was a collective effort of what’s in our sphere of control,” Connelly said. “And using data to back up our reasoning; this isn’t just us saying, ‘Well, phones are annoying.’ We know from science, developmentally, their brains aren’t ready.”

The American Psychological Association released a report early this year decrying social media platforms as unsafe for children, who lack the impulse control to resist “doom-scrolling” on endless social media feeds. They’re especially sensitive to influence from their peers, driving a “problematic” overemphasis on likes and follower counts, the report said. Untethered internet access also exposes young people to potential malicious actors online and harmful content.

Research like the APA’s and observations in the school played a role in their enforcement.

“The phone or the iPad is right here, it’s so inviting, and it’s so easy to just pick it up and do something on it,” Flett eighth-grader Emily Ahlborn said. “Even though I know that another thing will bring me more joy, it’s just so addicting. It’s like a shackle that you just want to do that instead.”

As an interventionist who works one-on-one with struggling students, Connelly said kids’ issues on social media often cross her desk when it bleeds into the school day. This was common before the school cracked down on cellphones.

Kids at Flett describe a sort of Wild West in school hallways before the ban: Students would record videos of each other without their knowledge and post them to social media.

A trend permeating more than Flett, many operated anonymous “Ship or dip” accounts on TikTok and Instagram. On these accounts, kids post photos of two peers and ask viewers if they “ship” the duo, thinking they would be a good couple, or “dip” the pairing as incompatible.

Before the ban, Flett saw dozens of these accounts, Flett students said.

“People would spread rumors too, and people would judge you and just a lot more negative stuff,” said Lucas Thiry, eighth-grader.

Students never knew when one of their faces would be posted online, sometimes appearing besides a platonic friend or even a staff member. These posts not only fueled unsolicited comments on students’ appearances, but created tension, drama and rumors surrounding them in their schools.

Being posted online “can literally ruin friendships,” Ahlborn said.

“Things will be posted about you, then it just spreads through the school,” seventh-grader Emaleah Regalado said. “Then you get trapped in it, and it feels like you can’t get out.”

Once the ban settled and cellphones became less prominent in their classroom, these accounts began to fizzle out, said eighth-grader Shontee McSteen, and kids feel more secure roaming the halls with less threat of online exposure.

Adopting the restrictions took a whole school buy-in, staff said, from more than just each adult that works there.

“Kids are working really hard,” said Salk’s Lyndsey Sabo, a school counselor and volleyball coach.

In general, the prohibition helped to foster “positive community in the school,” Flett’s Ahlborn said, evident by more conversations over games of foosball and pingpong and fewer nonconsensual photos posted online.

Salk and Flett operate under the same formula: Subtract the phones, add more clubs and activities to keep hands busy during idle time.

Sabo received a grant from the Spokane Public Schools Foundation to purchase board games for student use. Uncle’s Games gave the school a deal on a large purchase, and now clattering Jenga pieces and the groans of Uno players fill the Salk lunchroom.

Flett’s open-concept commons has pingpong and foosball tables set up, and music plays softly over speakers. Some days, kids dance during their lunches.

“The school does a really good job of making all those activities and getting a bunch of stuff out,” Flett’s Ahlborn said. “You’ve got 50 things going in the library at once at all times, it feels like.”

Michelle Meek, a library information specialist at Flett, ensured her library is brimming with things to do. Kids build forts with the space’s stools, make buttons and bracelets, host paper airplane contests, color and, of course, read.

Posters cover walls in both schools, advertising the diverse club offerings – another critical variable in the formula to wean kids off their phones.

Teacher Terrie McCormick oversees several clubs at Salk: photography club, adventure club and yarn club. Each are interests of hers that she shares with her kids before and after school, to which the phone ban extends.

“That practice of putting the phone down allows them to disconnect in such a way that they realize there’s a lot more going on,” McCormick said. “So because of the conditioning of not being attached to their phone, allows them to extend further into the day.”

Because of the school crackdowns, students noted their attachment and began self-policing at home, they said.

“I just find myself going out more, and I find myself joining clubs and just doing things I enjoy more, and I’m not constantly on my device,” Flett’s McSteen said.

“Not having your phone makes you want to do more stuff, go outside more, and then you start getting good at stuff you never knew you could be good at,” said Isaiah Eaton, eighth-grader at Salk. He learned to paint after his parents confiscated his phone.

“I’m not good at it, but, like, interesting hobby,” Isaiah said.

In her Salk class, McCormick sees pupils more willing to ask and answer questions, an eagerness to solve problems and pull out their calculator, changes she attributes to the absence of cellphones. Removing cellphones heightened the effectiveness of other classroom tools, she said.

“I almost feel like with technology, when you’re cutting that off, it’s almost like being at night observing the stars – now you can see it,” she analogized. “You’re not competing with all this other light pollution coming in.”

Used to the policy and having born witness to the changes in her school and herself, eighth-graders like Ahlborn have assumed a leadership role in modeling the policy for younger students. She’s hopeful that as time goes on, the restriction will naturalize into school culture.

“I can imagine that a lot of these new sixth-graders coming in, maybe seeing eighth-graders who don’t have their phones and are OK with it,” Emily said. “I mean, I’m no psychologist, but maybe, you know, that might influence them to take a break from their phones if they see us doing it. And I think that might impact the future pretty well.”