Learning curve: WA schools grapple with new cell phone policies

If a kid had to access their phone locked in a Yondr pouch, he said, they could cut it open.

Phones can also create unsafe situations. Teenagers will film and share videos of other teenagers performing sex acts, for example, Stiepleman said, which schools then have to figure out how to deal with. 

Stiepleman is an advocate for “phone-free schools,” which he stresses is different from a cell phone ban. A ban would prohibit students from bringing their phone to school at all, which would be unrealistic for kids who have adult responsibilities or who are coming home to an empty house. 

“There are a lot of reasons why you want kids to be able to access phones,” he said, “and at the same time, we want to be able to say ‘There’s a time and place for that.’”

After the iPhone emerged in 2007, Stiepleman said, schools around the country had to come to terms with the new technology. 

Within a few years, he said, districts started passing policies that not only allowed, but sometimes even encouraged, kids to bring their device to school for educational reasons. 

Teachers were interested in using cell phones in instruction, Stiepleman said, and districts didn’t have the funds to distribute devices to every student, so “it seemed to fill a void.” 

As different social media platforms started popping up, phones became more disruptive, he said. 

Hearing from teachers about the distractions phones caused “absolutely was a mind-set shift for me and my peers,” he said. 

Then the pandemic happened. 

“All of a sudden, your phone was your only window to the world,” Stiepleman said. 

The resulting isolation and reliance on devices for social interaction “didn’t end when the pandemic ended,” he said. “They brought it back to school.” 

‘They just didn’t know what to do with each other’

After pandemic lockdown ended, Peninsula School District leaders watched students have difficulty socializing in person. 

“The rules seemed to be blended throughout COVID,” said district superintendent Krestin Bahr.

When kids came back to school in 2021, they were not allowed to talk to each other because of strict social distancing and masking requirements.

As restrictions loosened, those habits didn’t go away, said Goodman principal Ty Robuck. In the lunchroom, whole tables of students would be texting each other while “sitting right here across from each other,” he said. “They just didn’t know what to do with each other.”

Not only students struggled to adjust. 

Coming back, “I felt like a brand-new teacher,” said Scott McInnis, a Goodman math teacher. “I spent a year and a half teaching online and figuring out how I wanted to do that, and then all of a sudden that was gone.” 

Peninsula didn’t have an official district-wide cell phone policy before last year, which led to different expectations in different classrooms. 

Some teachers still enforced stricter rules. Melissa Guttormsen, who teaches science at Goodman, got a few emails from parents frustrated they were unable to reach their child while in her class. 

Texts or calls from parents used to disrupt the school day. 

“A lot of times, I know the parent’s intent is: ‘I’m just going to shoot a message and when they can, they will read it,’” Guttormsen said. But many kids think “I need to look at this now. It’s my mom, I gotta respond. ” 

The new cell phone policy has made parents a lot more understanding, she said, because they know the rules and are no longer upset at inconsistent standards. 

Robuck said he is seeing less and less of the antisocial behavior he witnessed from students in the first few years out of lockdown. 

The policy has “really changed the way kids have engaged,” Robuck said. “Even though they can have their phones during lunch, a lot of them don’t.” 

‘It makes them want to do it more’

Lilly Smith, 13, said she’s had a phone since she was around 8. 

Smith, an eighth grader at Goodman, uses it to play games, message friends and access TikTok and Snapchat. 

“I feel like TikTok kind of takes over,” she said. “You have to have a limit on it, because you could just sit there scrolling effortlessly and not realize how long you spend on there.” 

It can be stressful, especially when she sees “drama” on the social media app — either between people she knows at school, or people far away.

During Covid, sitting in front of a screen for hours was hard, Smith said. “I didn’t really understand what I was learning.” 

The new cell phone policy is good overall, she said, because phones are a distraction. 

But she also feels the policy is “making kids more sneaky.” Students still bring their phone to class, she said, though they’re not supposed to. 

“I think it’s definitely making kids want to go on it more,” Smith said. 

When kids “know they’re not supposed to do something,” she said, “sometimes it makes them want to do it more.”