Wylie ISD began its own strict no-phone policy when the new school year started in August.
“No cell from bell to bell,” That’s the phrase Wylie ISD, which serves more than 5,000 students, coined before this school year. That means, during class time, passing periods, lunchtime even in the bathroom students’ phones must stay in their backpacks, “Cell phones do not cause all of our problems, but they are certainly a tool that can be misused.
Reagan Berry is the principal of Wylie High School and took the lead in implementing the new policy, “What I started seeing as the principal was this tool being drastically misused in the school setting, in the learning environment, It was causing a lot of issues as far as drama within our campus.” At first, fighting against students’ temptation to hop on their phones was difficult. If someone breaks the rules, Berry says school staff will confiscate the phone for the day, “I mean, We have about 300 referrals and that’s pretty good. The average per day that we’re taking up is about seven per day that we are taking up. And that number has gone down as the school year has gone on.”
Teachers say they’ve had minimal issues with students challenging the rules, but they weren’t thrilled. But over the last few months, English teacher Kimberly Remple says she’s seen attitudes shift, “At the beginning of the year, it was bad as far as talking about it. And they were very, very hateful towards certain people making these decisions. And so I really just had to kind of do the same thing I did in my old school, and I really explained to them the reasoning behind it. And I think a lot of times when you tell kids the reason behind rules, they’re a lot more willing to follow them.”
Beyond some student frustration, Wylie ISD says the results of the cell phone ban have been remarkable. Principal Berry says there’s significantly less school-related social media drama. Administrators no longer have to go through multiple devices to work out issues between students. Students previously used their cell phones to coordinate meetups to vape in the bathroom. This year, the number of vape write-ups has dropped significantly. At lunchtime, Berry says students now talk to each other and have fun instead of scrolling through their phones or listening to music, “You could walk through lunch and see kids playing card games and speaking to each other and having conversations. And that’s been really refreshing to see.”
Wylie High students have slowly become less connected to their phones and more connected to each other. Holly Kirby, an English and yearbook teacher, says now some students even lose track of their phones at school or have trouble remembering where they left them once the school day ends. Overall, Kirby says students' relationships with their phones have changed, “It’s not constantly their best friend that they are constantly in touch with. It’s more of a long-distance friend they don’t see all the time. So they’ve learned to adjust their connection to it.”)Going forward, Wylie ISD intends to keep the cell ban in place. But Kirby is concerned it could get harder to enforce, “Technology’s always going to be changing and the nanotechnology, everything’s always going to be getting smaller and more convenient and more easily hidden and things like that.” Administration and parents say they’re keeping that in mind for the future.
In the near-er future, other Texas school districts are either considering or already planning to implement their own cell bans similar to Wylie ISD’s. And Mike Morath, commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, recently told state lawmakers they should consider a statewide ban on phones in public schools. But even if the Texas Legislature doesn’t push this issue, it seems likely superintendents and principals across the state will keep expanding the policies, district by district.