SHELBY COUNTY, Ala. (WBRC) – Students are back in the classroom without their cell phones this year. With the FOCUS Act signed into law, students are now prohibited from using them during the instructional day.
Spain Park High School junior Sai Vajaha is pushing back with a petition to end the ban and it’s gaining a lot of traction.
When his classmates within the Hoover City Schools district found out about the phone ban, they were shocked.
“I got a ton of messages saying there’s no way this is real,” said Vajaha. “First thing I did was screenshot it and put it on my Snapchat story so other people can see and actually read the email. Everyone was putting their own taglines and writing in the chat, ‘There’s no way this is happening. I can’t believe this is happening. What am I going to do?’”
While each school district is handling the ban differently, Hoover City Schools allows students to keep their phones as long as they’re turned off and stored away.
After about a week in school, are students complying with the new rule?
“What I’ve seen is students going in the bathroom to use their phones or hiding it next to their leg on the side or kind of propping it up on their Chromebook in different types of classes,” shared Vajaha.
His friend, Hoover High School senior Bhavesh Garlapati, is noticing the same thing at his school, adding the ban is creating even more distractions.
“It’s going to be this continuous cycle of wash, rinse, repeat,” he said. “Like, you try and stop this new problem, somebody’s going to find a way and a lot of these kids are incredibly smart these days.”
The teens say the positives of cell phones, being able to check in with family or use tools like calculators, calendars, and study apps, outweigh the negatives. They also want to be treated like young adults getting prepared for the real world.
“We’re not going to see this in one to two years in the military, in the job, or going to college – we’re not going to see, ‘Oh, you’re not allowed to use phones anywhere. We’re going to see that – hey, you’re responsible for yourself’ and the Department of Education isn’t trying to give us that,” said Garlapati.
The outpouring of concern and outrage from students pushed Vajaha to take action.
“The reason why I started the petition is because there aren’t many students that are kind of fighting for or against this ban,” he said.
Nearly 10,000 people have signed the petition as of Monday night, Aug. 18.
“My solution to this is to not have phones during instruction periods, but rather during lunch or period changes,” said Vajaha. “That’s almost an hour during the day where students can check messages, check calls, and if they need to contact their parents, and this gives students a little kind of dopamine boost during that five minutes or 25 minutes in that social area when they see their friends in the hallways and they can take pictures, that type of thing.”
Alabama State House District 8 Representative Terri Collins responded to the petition, saying she continues to support the FOCUS Act.
The first time a Hoover City School student is caught using their cell phone, they get a warning. Future incidents could lead to in-school or out-of-school suspension.
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