Some Arizona leaders are hoping cell phones will be banned throughout the school day as part of state law in next legislative session. “This is a real emergency, the problem of cell phones in the classroom,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said at a news conference on Thursday, arguing that the issue of students being distracted in classes continues to worsen. House Bill 2793, sponsored by Rep. Beverly Pingerelli, R-Peoria, was vetoed by Gov. Katie Hobbs in April. The bill passed the legislature along party lines, with Republicans backing the bill and Democrats voting against it.
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Montana governor wants cell-phone ban in schools
Arizona leaders to renew push for school cell phone ban
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Education in Focus. I'm your host, Elena Krenodel. As the school year kicks off, some states are considering banning cell phones in schools. Joining me to discuss this is chalkboard news editor Brendan Clary. Brendan, Arizona and Montana are two places that are talking about this. What are they considering? - Basically, what they're considering is how do we get rid of cell phones in the classroom? And so in Arizona, the superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne is basically saying that students need to not have any cell phones at all in the classroom. And that's coming from the leader of a public instruction there. And in Arizona, they had a bill that was vetoed that would talk about this. But essentially, when you have somebody from the top saying schools need to do this, that's essentially what we have in Montana too. It's not like a hard bill of like this is what you will do. It's more of like the governor, Greg June Forte there in Montana saying, we need to be focused on learning and cell phones are distracting students and disrupting the learning environment. And so we need to get rid of them wherever possible, essentially having no cell phones, like having policies where there are no cell phones. And so that was a letter to school superintendents and school board trustees there in Montana. So these aren't laws per se. These are saying from the top down, this is what we would like to see. And so I think could you potentially have like a school board say like, oh no, we don't want to do that like maybe. And I don't know if there'd be any legal repercussions because it's not codified. But saying from the top, like we want it this way because we have these good reasons to do it. So you need to have that. I do think that there was a lot of force from the superintendent in Arizona from the governor in Montana. That does have a lot of force. We have seen instances where school districts like in Oklahoma and I think also in Arizona have defied the superintendent. And so like if they didn't do it, I don't know exactly what would happen. But essentially there's been kind of a ground swell of like support in recent years. And like really the last year I would say of states and school districts saying like we're gonna have even larger school districts like New York City and Los Angeles Unified I believe saying like, okay, we don't want to have cell phones in our school district. Chicago Public Schools I think is doing a similar thing. I could be wrong about that. But essentially saying we don't want to have cell phones in schools. We want to have cell phone free policies so that kids are not distracted and they can learn. - Well, and isn't there some data behind that too of like a large majority of teachers say that it's a big concern? - Yeah, I think so. And I'm not sure exactly what those points are but I think that we've seen like a lot of teachers saying like I can't get kids off of their phones. I can't get them to engage with the schoolwork. And essentially too, if you have these policies that are sort of like don't like you can have your phone but like don't to get out in class. Like who's left implementing those policies? Like who's trying to enforce those policies and it's the teachers saying like you can't have that out. And like it's like what are you gonna do? Right? And then it kind of gets into like a very kind of like and then you have 30 kids in class and they're all saying what are you gonna do? You know, like how do you keep order that way? So if it's like a school wide or like a statewide, like you will not have your phone in here. Like it's against the policies against state law. You know, it's a little bit more maybe enforced like enforceable saying like this is the expectation. So I don't know. I think that those kind of arguments are there but you know we anecdotally and I think with the research it shows that teachers are having a hard time with these cell phones in the classroom. Well then what's some of the kind of the conversations surrounding these policies as to why are people opposed to them? What are concerns people are raising? Yeah, I think that there's a number of concerns that people have with these what's of like top down bands cell phone like limits and some of those are actually from parents who say that they want to be connected to their kid and I do think that, you know, maybe part of it, I'm floating this out here. It might be that, you know, we've had a generation of people who have had a cell phone for a long time and smartphone for a long time. And now their kids have smartphones and they're maybe going to middle school or high school and they want to have that contact that they've enjoyed with them thus far. And so now you're hearing from like a school district or from state officials, hey, we're not going to have that. And you're not going to be able to reach your kid about something that's going on after school. Like that doesn't feel good, right? So I think that parents have generally pulled pretty hesitantly toward this. We covered this at chalkboard, you know, a few weeks ago actually that parents have pretty high disapproval rates of these kinds of cell phone bands because they want to be able to reach their kids and that they do like to have that kind of contact. I think that there's also the argument that sometimes made that, you know, we're going to have cell phones in your job. So you have to learn how to deal with them instead of, you know, getting rid of them completely, right? So instead of limiting them. And I think that you could kind of argue back and say, well, like these are kids. Like when you're an adult, you can make your own decisions. But these are kids and maybe they're not fully able to make their own kinds of decisions, especially if you think that social media is addictive and maybe manipulates the brain or kind of, you know, does some of these things that are maybe even like chemically sort of akin to addiction or that your cell phone is sort of like wired into that then wouldn't it be better to remove those kinds of problems from the classroom. So I think that you can see how these arguments go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And that there's, you know, a lot of heat on both sides trying to say like, well, this is what we think is right. You know, it's one of those very contentious sorts of things which, you know, kind of seems small, but you can see how easily this would, you know, totally derail a board meeting. - Yeah, and Arizona, they did try to take measures to implement this statewide. And I believe it was the last legislative session. - Yeah, I think so in April. - How did that go? - Yeah, so that was vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbs. So she vetoed it in April. And so it was, you know, passed along party lines. Republicans were behind it and Democrats were opposed to it. Essentially too, like, you know, I think part of the argument that Hobbs had was that this was an unnecessary mandate. That's her language there, that, you know, schools can kind of tackle this from, you know, case by case, like a county by county sort of level. - I think too, like, there is an argument. Again, like critics of these sorts of statewide or, you know, large, like blanket bans on cell phones have is that, you know, parents want to be able to contact their kids and shouldn't they be able to do that? So I think you can have, it doesn't necessarily need to be partisan. I think that, you know, it kind of depends probably on like what else is baked into the bill and, you know, what's kind of the temperature of the legislature. But I don't think that that's always a partisan thing there in terms of, you know, this is what parents say that they want and, but then there's the research about like, here's what teachers say and then also what are the effects on students. So, you know, the Montana governor is citing like, well, this is how it affects student performance. And so I think that there's a lot of different kinds of research, there's a lot of different kinds of arguments. It's not that anything is wrong. I think it's just kind of like, it might be like, you know, try and see and do that. And then also like, you know, implementation is difficult, right? It's hard to have these kinds of top level things and then put them into practice and make sure that they're being implemented and followed every day. 'Cause I think that that can be difficult too. - Well, Brennan, thank you for your insights on this story. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at chalkboardnews.com. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
