No more phones in PVPUSD schools. Recently, the PVPUSD school board has come to the conclusion that phones are negatively affecting students at school, so a new policy that phones are not allowed to be out at school has been enacted.

As discussed in a previous article in The Point, France has a nationwide ban on cellphones in school. We are now seeing the same policy at our school district.

The effect on our school, however, is minimal. Teachers continue to go about teaching their classes without any changes in their phone policy. At the high school level, teachers are encouraged to limit phone use in class but teachers are allowed to dictate their own policy on phones in the classroom.

It’s the middle school level where drastic changes are taking place. To truly understand the changes at the middle school, I interviewed PVIS eighth grader Andreas Tempereau.

“They take away our phones if they see them out even at lunch time, which stinks. I know some people that troll the teachers by taping a picture of a calculator to their phone,”  A. Tempereau said.

Obviously, most middle schools are not happy about the new phone policy and many have found loopholes in the system.

With students getting phones and access to social media at younger and younger ages, cyberbullying rates have skyrocketed. To try cutting down cyberbullying rates, administrators created the no access to phones policy in hopes that students will have less time to send mean and hateful comments or texts to other students.

I can agree with the PVPUSD board that cyberbullying rates are on an uptick especially with even elementary school students getting phones now. But I do think the policy is a little too stringent in the middle school.

Middle schoolers should be allowed to have access to their phones during lunch and snack, but phones should be away during class.

This will discourage students from using the bathroom constantly just so they can check their phone. Such a stringent policy ruins the whole idea of limiting phone us when students are desperate to find loopholes.

At the elementary school, however, the phone policy is perfect. Elementary school students shouldn’t have phones. They should be playing on the playground or building fundamental social skills with other students. It’ll be interesting to see what the parents think of this policy as it progresses.

Who knows: things might stay the same or change. PV parents wield an enormous power of influence on the district.