WEST SPRINGFIELD — Before the school year is out, the cellphone pouches introduced at the high school this September may end up at West Springfield Middle School, too.
It won’t happen without parent and student input, however, middle school Principal Peter Gillen assured the School Committee last month. At the board’s Sept. 24 meeting, Gillen asked for permission to start “very, very slowly” planning the introduction of Yondr pouches at his school, which serves grades 6-8.
“This is not a program that we’d be in any position to begin tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or two months from now. This is the beginning of the conversation,” he said.
The middle school has sent a message to parents inviting them to share their thoughts on cellphone pouches in an online survey.
Gillen said he’s heard that some parents are concerned about their children being able to reach them, or call for help, during an emergency at school. He noted that “every classroom and every office has a land phone capable of dialing 911,” and school staff carry walkie-talkies that can connect to the town’s public safety agencies.
“While I’m very, very sensitive to the concerns about emergency contact, I would offer that middle schoolers are middle schoolers, and if they’re able to have some communication between themselves during the school day and to do something that might not be academically focused, I know that we deal with a lot of that, too,” Gillen said. “We have students and families that are very capable of responsible cellphone use, and we have students and families that struggle with that. It certainly impacts the day-to-day.”
He said he envisioned the pouch system starting no sooner than the third quarter of the school year, which begins in mid-January. In addition to hearing parents’ and students’ thoughts, he would also want to send some of his staff to the high school to observe how the system works there before bringing it to the middle school.
West Springfield High School introduced the pouch system this year after a successful rollout at the vocational high school program in West Springfield, the Lower Pioneer Valley Career Technical Education Center, during the 2023-24 school year. Students are given a magnetically sealed pouch and lock their communications device in it each morning. The sealed pouch remains in their possession, but they don’t have access to their phone until it is unlocked at the end of the day. Both WSHS and CTEC use a San Francisco company called Yondr as their vendor for the pouches.
At a School Committee meeting earlier this year, high school Principal Patrick Danby described the unlocking process as similar to removing a theft-deterrent device at a clothing store. The school employs multiple magnet stations at each entrance and exit.
To set up a Yondr system at West Springfield High School, including 1,200 pouches, cost more than $46,000 in last year’s budget. More than half of that cost was funded by a grant. When CTEC, which has an enrollment of nearly 700, set up its system the previous year, prices were lower and the entire cost was covered by a $20,000 grant.
