This 2024 academic school year a new policy was implemented at Carbondale Community High School (CCHS) to prevent use of cellular devices in the classroom in the hopes to encourage students focus more. However, as a senior who never had this policy. I find this quite redundant and useless. Only a certain number of classes put this policy in place leaving me confused.

 In some classes some teachers don’t place it at all or get too serious about following the rules. According to Jemima McDonald, a junior at CCHS, “I feel like the phone policy is slightly useless.” McDonald went on to state, “I genuinely don’t think this policy is helping much because i still see kids on their phones in class.” this is an opinion not only held by students but by parents as well.

Even some parents find this policy unnecessary. Abby Asher, a parent of a CCHS student, “If a student isn’t being disruptive in class because of their phone, doesn’t have it out or have the volume on, why can’t they keep it on them in class?” Asher also expressed concern over the situation, “Who is going to be responsible for replacing the phones when they get stolen or somehow damaged.”  Although many students and parents express concern on this new policy some believe this may be a positive change.

Even students outside of the Carbondale Community also express different views on this new policy. Sadie Stout, a student from the southeast Missouri high school of Malden, has mixed feelings when it comes to the phone policy. “I don’t think it helps us focus more; we focused when we needed to,” Stout states prior to the policy, “We were not social. We sat on our phones the whole time, now we are forced to be social.” Social skills aside, I have yet to see how this policy is effective.

When teachers enforce this policy, it creates a tense environment in the classroom among students and teachers. With some students thinking of ways to hide their phones from teachers or multiple students being removed from class daily. In classes where the cell phone policy is not enforced, the classroom environment is much more relaxed with few students pushing back by being on their phones. Examples include my honors studio art class and my competitive band class. These two classes are a couple of those which do not enforce the policy. Very few students in these classes are on their cellular devices, and when they are it tends to be during down time or when one does not have work that needs to be completed.

For this reason, it is my humble opinion that this new policy regarding cellular devices is not only unreasonable, but also ineffective.  It would be curious to see how test scores and overall student grades are either improved or not as a result of this new policy.  Sadly, we will not really know how much of an impact this is having on student performance rates until the year is over, and I have graduated.