The first day of school is next week and with it comes a new statewide ban on cellphones and internet-enabled devices. Local Rochester students and teachers have different outlooks on how the school year will go.
Gina Vasquez Soto, an incoming sixth grader at School 33, said she’s worried that the change to no phones could backfire — possibly leading to violent disruptions between students and adults when teachers have to take devices away from students.
She also said students have used phones to plan skirmishes.
“Fifth and sixth graders, they fight a lot. Because, like, they’re a little older. ... They have phones and stuff and they communicate on phones, and sometimes they'll start arguments over the phone," Gina said. “And if they plan to fight each other on the phone — and they’ll wait for school to start then to start the fighting.”
Gina said she doesn’t expect the new rule will change her habits since already she doesn’t bring her electronics to school. In case of an emergency, she said she wouldn’t want her phone in a pouch, like a Yondr pouch, anyway.
“If it's an emergency, I don't want to wait like, (in) a whole line, and it's probably gonna take like, 30 minutes to to get there,” she said. “Every single classroom has phones in it, just in case, and our gym has a phone. So there's pretty much phones everywhere.”
Shannon Lanz, a PreK teacher at School 33 in Rochester, said students as young as three have shown up to school with phones.
“I just make them keep it in their book bag," Lanz said. “And I get it because some of them are going through multifamily homes... getting passed between parents or family members, and they just want to know that they can contact them, which I totally get.”
Lanz said she’s confident her colleagues have a handle on the new cellphone policy, but expects it will be a tough transition.
“But once that transition is over, I feel like kids will be safer and more comfortable in the school,” she said. “Especially the older kids, 'cause there was some inappropriate pictures that were being passed around and snuck during the school day.”
In general, she said a lot of kids are trapped on devices, especially children living in areas where it isn’t safe to play outside, or whose parents don’t have the time to take them outside.
The Governor’s office published earlier this month a statewide database of local school district policies on internet-enabled devices.
