The Proviso D209 board of education appears to not be ready to accept a ban on cellphones in classrooms.
Interim Supt. Alexander Aschoff and the board discussed the information item at the July 16 meeting. Aschoff said the idea for a cell phone ban came from teachers expressing the need for more help controlling cell phone use in the classroom.
No formal policy has yet been designed, Aschoff said.
However, several board members pushed back at the idea, saying that a cellphone policy already is in place and it hasn’t been enforced.
“We have a policy in place and we are not enforcing the policy we already have in place. What makes us think that somebody is going to put a phone in a pouch that is locked up,” said board member Arbdella Patterson. “I just don’t see it.”
Under the policy, administrators are permitted to discipline students for “gross disobedience or misconduct,” which includes using a cell phone in any manner that disrupts the educational environment or violates the rights of others, including taking photos in locker rooms or bathrooms, cheating, or in any other way that violates student conduct rules.
The question, Aschoff said, is whether to bolster enforcement or to simply restrict students from using their phones.
Patterson said she has spoken with parents who oppose a ban because they to want to be in communication with their children.
Board member Rodney Alexander said that principals and teachers need to enforce any policy, such as dress codes, and should be held accountable for not doing so.
“It’s the same policy. Good luck,” Alexander said. “If you don’t have the parent engagement with this…you’re going to have some teachers enforcing some teachers not. This will go back to accountability and principals managing the building and everybody being on the same beat of music.”
Alexander also stressed that Proviso should not be compared to another district.
“We can’t compare what any other school does because we are not any other school,” he said. “There are a lot of cultural climate issues that we continue to kick the can down the road with, but we want to pick the ones we think are going to be enforceable when we don’t enforce them across the board.”
Proviso is not alone in trying to crack down on cell phone use in schools.
According to EducationWeek, as of July 2024, at least seven states have passed laws or created policies to ban or restrict use of cell phones or pushed local districts to enact their own policies. The two largest school districts, Los Angeles and New York, are also working on policies to restrict cell phone use in class.
While there is no ban of cell phone use in the classroom in Illinois, school districts across the state have begun implementing their own policies.
According to WBEZ, in Evanston Township High School, students switch off their cell phones and store them at the entrance of each classroom. Chicago Public Schools lets each campus set their own policy regarding use.
In 2022, Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 began requiring students to drop off their phones in a slot organizer in the front of the classroom. According to the Wednesday Journal, a survey administered by the district’s cell phone committee showed that an overwhelming majority of faculty were in strong agreement to maintaining a phone-free class. After the policy’s implementation, another survey reported that 72% of teachers noticed a “significant improvement in instructional quality” while 23% said they saw slight improvement.
At Proviso, board member Sandra Hixson said it would really be up to principals to reinforce this type of policy.
“You are not really taking students’ cell phones away all day, it is actually during instruction time and they would have a pouch to keep those cell phones in,” Hixson said. Exceptions would be made for students who require a phone as part of their IEP.
Hixson, chair of the policy committee, declined to comment.
Part of a new policy would include requiring students to put away their phones in secure pouches at the beginning of the class period and would retrieve them at the end of class.
But telling a student to not use their phone versus telling a student to lock their phone away is completely different, Aschoff said.
“If we are going to do this, which will impact every single student, more discussion is needed,” Aschoff said.
Jarrell Davis, a rising junior at Proviso Math and Science Academy, who spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting, said that as a student who was part of the policy committee, he saw little-to-no-difference between the current policy and what the district is discussing.
According to Davis, one of the points discussed in the committee was students using cell phones to talk about fights that were going to happen. Davis said if a fight is going to happen, it is going to happen regardless of whether students use their phones to share the information or not.
“Let’s see the policy that we have enforced first,” Davis said. “Let’s see teachers use classroom management time, put it in their syllabus and create students who are able to succeed in a college environment.”
Davis said that as the sole Black male student in the Dual Degree Program with Triton College, he needs to learn self-control to make sure he is not a target. Preparing students to go out in the world to succeed and not have a target on their backs is what the district needs to be doing, he said.
“I don’t want to see anymore show politics, I want to see policies enforced,” Davis said. “People who are doing their job to keep their job, not people who just want to do whatever.”