EAST LONGMEADOW — School Committee members discussed staff survey results and approved the continuation of the current cell phone policy during the June 3 meeting.
The current cell phone policy was implemented at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year after discussion and approval during the previous year. The policy was initially brought forward due to concerns from the school and community about cell phones as a distraction and its impact on student engagement, according to the School Committee.
As described in the student handbook, the updated cell phone policy requires all students at Birchland Middle School and East Longmeadow High School to place their cell phones in their assigned pouch located in each classroom at the start of the class. As a result, students are unable to use their phones during class. However, students do have access to their devices between classes and at lunch as well as before and after school hours, the policy states.
This policy was approved by the School Committee at its June 26, 2023, meeting. Prior to its implementation, students were allowed to remain in possession of their devices during the school day, but could not use them in classes, as stated in the student handbook.
In the recent end-of-year survey conducted on staff about the cell phone policy, 72% of those who responded stated that the policy was easy to implement and 72.3% agreed that it should be maintained beyond the 2023-24 school year, according to Superintendent Gordan Smith. There were 112 responses to this survey.
These results are slightly lower than a similar survey taken by staff in the beginning of the 2023-24 school year with 92 responses. In this fall survey, 83.7% of staff stated that the policy was easy to implement and 89.2% said they would support its continuation, Smith stated at the Oct. 16, 2023, meeting. Alternatively, only 10.5% of high school students and 26.4% of middle school students supported the policy’s continuation in this survey.
The recent survey also stated that 58.9% of staff who responded had to remind students of the policy on a weekly basis, with some reminding on a daily basis, Smith said. However, the committee noted that frequent reminders was not necessarily due to negative reasons.
At the June 3 meeting, the School Committee agreed to continue discussing how to best support teachers and improve messaging for the policy over the summer.
