Cell Phone Acceptable Use Policy

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The school Washington Episcopal has an Acceptable Use Policy in place for cell phones. Any student below the 7th grade is not permitted to have a cell phone at school. I disagree with this statement. Children are recieving cell phones at a much younger age than 7th grade. Many parents use it to know when to pick up their children from activities and safety reasons. With the large amount of families that are divorced, many times there is an issue with picking the student up from school. A text message would allow the parent to let the student know if plans have changed. More and more, children have a larger responsibility at a younger age, and I do not agree that only 7th grade and older should be able to have them in the school. I know of many students that received their's in 5th and 6th grade. So, I do not think there should be a rule about grade level.

It also states that they must be turned off and kept in the locker at all times. If the cell phone is off, there is no purpose. If the cellular phone is on silence, it would not interupt the class when receiving calls or messages. A student could check it throughout the day to be sure a parent has not texted or called. I absolutely believe it should not be used frequently for the wrong reasons, but it is nice for a parent to be able to contact their child in case of an emergency. There are many educational uses for cell phones, and if they are in their lockers the students cannot use them in class for the lesson.

Lastly, it explains that there is absolutely no text messaging allowed while on campus. One of the tools that we have been introduced to allows the students to text in questions and/or answers to given questions. This is a great way to allow students that do not want to say outloud that they are lost to notify the teacher there is an issue. So, I think texting should be allowed for education purposes only. If you are not doing a lesson that includes a tool that requires texting and a student is texting ,then of course there should be consequences.