IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) – One day not too far off, families in the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) might be looking at a complete ban of cell phones in schools.
For months now, members of the Board of Education have been having conversations about the impact cell phones have on kids and what the district should do about it.
District officials sent out surveys, got the data back, and crafted two different proposed policies that board members discussed Tuesday. One was a limited ban on cell phones and the other a complete ban.
Superintendent Matt Degner started off Tuesday’s conversation by saying he had heard from school administrators that they were in favor of the limited ban. That option would allow students to still use phones during passing periods, lunch, and study hall. Degner said administrators were concerned about how they’d handle a complete ban where phones were off limits as soon as students entered the school building.
However, many of the board members said that a limited ban was essentially what they already had in place and if phones are negatively impacting kids, then that option isn’t solving the problem.
“Where we are right now, I just cannot support a limited ban. And I’m still where I am—where I was two weeks ago or four weeks ago. The bell-to-bell ban that we see in the sample policy, the other sample policy,” said Lisa Williams, a School Board Director.
Board members recognized that, with the poll, they had asked teachers opinions’ and now were looking at going against that preference, but they said they believed a complete ban was the right direction for the district.
The survey results also showed that the majority of parents said cell phones were either extremely or somewhat negative for their child’s social-emotional well-being.
The superintendent said the next step was to draw up more concrete plans centered around that complete ban and bring those back to the board.
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