(The Center Square) – North Carolina needs a statewide policy regulating the use of student cellphones in public schools, a top state educator said Tuesday.
Two bills are pending in the Legislature. Cell Phone-Free Education, known also as House Bill 87, requires school boards to “adopt a cellphone-free education policy to eliminate or severely restrict student access to cellphones during instructional time.”
It allows exceptions if a teacher authorizes the use for educational purposes, if a cell phone is required for a students’ individualized education program or for the student’s health care.
Student Use of Wireless Communication Devices, known also as Senate Bill 55, contains similar language.
In North Carolina and nationally, there is a “wide disparity” in how school districts handle cellphone use in the classroom, Michael Maher, chief accountability of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told The Center Square.
“There is emerging evidence on the negative impact of not only on instruction but on student long-term outcomes on mental health,” Maher said.
Social media in particular is “highly addictive,” Maher said.
“If there is a way for us to help remove that, it would absolutely help instructional practice,” said Maher, a former high school teacher. “Student performance is actually tied to student attention. Phones are attention grabbing. You have this device that is drawing their attention.”
A classroom ban would likely require teachers to collect cellphones in the morning as class begins and return them at the end of the school day, said Maher.
“There are pouches and other types of solutions to store student devices,” he said. “The teacher would just make that part of their daily routine.”
Collecting student cellphones early in the day before instruction begins might be easier for teachers than having to constantly be on the lookout for students secretly using them throughout the day in the classrooms, Maher said.
“We already ask teachers to do too much,” he said. “I don’t think it’s fair to them.”
It is important to provide adequate funding for school districts to pay for storage devices, Maher added.
The North Carolina School Board Association has not taken a position on the two pending bills, spokesman Ben Christoph told The Center Square.
Cell Phone-Free Education passed 114-3 in the House of Representatives and is in the Rules Committee of the Senate. Student Use of Wireless Communication Devices passed 41-1 in the Senate and is in the Rules Committee of the House.
