School board adopts districtwide cellphone policy for students
After months of discussion, the Frederick County Board of Education in a split vote approved a districtwide cellphone usage policy for students.
The school board began drafting Policy 118 in September 2024.
Frederick County Public Schools Superintendent Cheryl Dyson at the beginning of this school year added new regulations in the Student Code of Conduct for device use in school. She has said the guidelines intended to build a foundation for the policy.
The school board voted 4-3 on May 21 to approve the policy.
School board members Rae Gallagher, Dean Rose, Karen Yoho and Janie Inglis Monier voted in favor of the policy. Colt Black, Jaime Brennan and Nancy Allen voted against the policy.
Although expectations for device usage in school was outlined in the Student Code of Conduct, consequences for violating the policy were not enforced in Term 1, which began Aug. 21, 2024, and ended Oct. 29, 2024.
The school district has said it wanted to familiarize students, staff members and families of the expectations without consequences. FCPS in Term 2 began enforcing those consequences.
Consequences for violating cellphone usage expectations could include a school administrator confiscating the device. This would require a parent or guardian to come to the school and get the device back.
Repeated offenses would result in an administrative referral.
Guidelines for device use differ between grade levels. The word 'devices' includes smart watches, tablets and e-readers, and is flexible to include new technology created in the future.
Elementary school students must have devices silenced and out of sight throughout the entire school day. This means elementary school students cannot use cellphones during non-class periods, on FCPS transportation to and from school, and at lunch.
Middle school students are permitted to use cellphones for 'expressly approved instructional purposes,' as well as on FCPS transportation. They are prohibited from using devices at lunch and between classes.
High school students are allowed to use cellphones also for instructional purposes, on FCPS transportation, at lunch and between classes.
To create the policy, FCPS has said it spoke with community members, including school administrators and students.
School board discussion
At the school board meeting on May 21, FCPS chief legal counsel Steven Blivess said while the draft policy contained a mandatory annual review and potential update, staff members were recommending a two-year review instead.
He said an annual review of the policy would be too cumbersome.
'Every year, the technology changes a lot, but I don't know that it changes quite that quickly,' Blivess said. He added that three school board members together can bring the policy back to the Policy Committee for further revision.
Yoho mentioned at the meeting that five bills attempting to govern student cellphone use in schools all failed in the Maryland General Assembly this past legislative session.
Brennan said she liked the policy, but her concern is that the school district will not be 'significantly enforcing' the policy.
She mentioned an incident that happened when FCPS students accessed a video chatting website called Thundr on school-issued Chromebooks and on FCPS Wi-Fi.
A parent of a student at Oakdale Middle School said he spoke with parents of students who accessed the website, and said students saw sexual content during live video chats while they watched on their Chromebooks in school and on the school bus.
FCPS in response said staff members at Oakdale Middle submitted requests to block the website on March 5 and 6, and that the website was blocked on March 7.
Tom Saunders, the director of middle schools at FCPS, said at the school board meeting that he meets with the middle school principals every two weeks to discuss different problems to ensure consistency across the 13 middle schools in the district.
Black said at the meeting that he was concerned about the section of the policy that discusses violations because the policy reads: 'Examples of violations may include, but are not limited to ...'
The policy then lists 20 examples of device use that would violate the policy, including racism, sexual harassment, and installing or using unauthorized software.
Black said this part of the policy was too open to interpretation, and asked if there were more examples the school board would need to list for that section to not be open-ended.
'And if not, I think we need to close the door on that, so it's very specific and spelled out, so that this can be clearly followed by administration,' he said.
Black said an open-ended section like this leaves room for uneven implementation and application across schools.
Blivess said the policy has a 'pretty comprehensive list,' and there was no way the policy could predict every example of a violation of the policy.
'We have some very smart students who may find ways to make use of it that we didn't anticipate, and to create a closed system, like you're suggesting, would mean that if they found a way to use it that was outside of this 20-item list,' FCPS couldn't invoke the policy for appropriate consequences, he said.
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