FARMINGTON—The Davis Board of Education at the July 15 meeting passed on First Reading a policy regarding when students can use their cell phones at school. The board discussed the options at length during the workshop prior to the business meeting and continued the discussion before taking the vote.   

“This all came from the legislative session where the legislature decided ‘hey we’d like to have a cell phone policy,’” said Ben Onofrio, Davis School District General Counsel. “The blanket rule is that it’s going to be banned, but any LEA (Local Education Agency) can make different rules that they like, so it kind of left it wide open to us. After some time with the Policy Committee, this is what we’ve come up with.”

Onofrio covered what the proposed restrictions would be and how the district would handle violations. “The idea was that we’d have basically bell to bell, no cell phones in elementary schools. In junior high we’d allow them to have cell phones or other devices at lunch as well. Then in high school we’d also allow them to have them at passing periods.”

There are some exceptions, he said. “For instance, if it’s written into an IEP or a 504 we’d have to allow the usage of devices when they’re required there. We tried to make it a little bit more open to individual principals to set their own rules for things like digital literacy – we need balance. We’re trying to balance between the cell phone being a tool or a distraction.”

The easiest part of this is the violations and enforcement wouldn’t change for devices, said Onofrio. “A couple of years ago, as you know, we had the Student Code of Conduct put together and we would just use the enforcement mechanism that we had in our Student Code of Conduct directly inputted into the policy.

There’s plenty of room for broad discussion here, he said. “This is a First Reading.” 

“I think there are a lot of kids who don’t bring phones to school,” said Board member Alisa Mercer. “Then they go home and tell their parents, ‘I need a phone because I need a phone for school.’ That shouldn’t be happening. We shouldn’t ever have kids who feel like ‘oh, I need to have a phone to be at school.’ Then we need to be providing phones to the students. I don’t think anyone wants to do that.” 

Mercer suggested adding something to the policy that specifies that those discretionary uses should be for academic purposes.

“I really do think we need to decide one way or the other with the junior high schools,” said Board member Emily Price. “Do we want to go bell to bell or do we want it to be like high school? I think it’s got to be one or the other. I think that lunch would be super complicated for our administrators.”

“I personally would like to see a bell to bell in junior high but I am very concerned about the enforcement of that,” said Board president Brigit Gerrard. “I’m worried about the enforcement piece so I would love to hear from our administrators about if this is even possible. So that’s my feeling on that.”

The board took a vote on whether cell phones should be allowed during lunch in junior highs with four to three in favor of no cell phones at lunch.

“I really think the cell phone policy has kind of been a big community deal,” said Board member Julie Powell. “I think we should take the approach as much as we possibly can to get feedback and not just from administrators, but also from our teachers, staff, parents and students. I know that’s a little difficult with the time frame that we have because it’s summer and we’ve got to get this passed by law before school starts.”

Ultimately the board passed the policy on First Reading. “Listening to this we are passing this as is?” said Powell. “That doesn’t mean we are agreeing to this. We’re only doing this so we can make our strategy on time. It’s a procedural reason why we’re doing this. We’re actually not passing this as written though.”

Several board members wanted to survey parents about the policy before the final vote. Superintendent Dr. Dan Linford expressed concern about getting a survey done so quickly but told the board he would have his team work on it. 

“We will try to get out ahead with some data for you,” he said. “I will send you individually the data that we collect. There won’t be discussion about that data until you’re back together again, but we’ll try to at least be clear and keep it very simple.”

The board will vote on a Final Reading of the policy in a future meeting.