Students and Their Cell Phones
ZANESVILLE, Ohio – At the beginning of the school year, the state of Ohio mandated that all K-12 learning institutions must have a student cell phone policy in action January 1st.
Zanesville City Schools Superintendent Laura Tompkins talked about the rules that her school district have implemented since 2021 and how they impact the students.
“In 2018 we instituted a rule here at Zanesville High School that you couldn’t have cell phones in educational areas, so the class rooms,” Tompkins said. “They could still have cell phones before school, at lunch, and anywhere in the hallways. And then in 2021, we instituted a no cell phone policy at all during the school day. So as soon as they come in the front doors, they’ve got to put them away. No headphones, no cell phones, and they’re gone the entire day. So some students put them in their lockers and some people put them in their backpacks but we don’t see cell phones all day long.”
The 4-and-a-half-year-old policy puts Zanesville ahead of other school districts that have only just begun to implement their own policies. Zanesville High School Principal Libby Hitchens explained how the policy benefits the students by keeping them engaged with not only their instructors but their classmates as well.
“We do have calculators, we do… every student has a Chromebook,” Hitchens said. “We have Chromebooks in every single classroom that students are able to get out as soon as they enter the classroom. So to be honest, we don’t need to use the cell phones as an educational tool because we have viewboards, we have Chromebooks, we have plenty of technology that takes the place of a cell phone. So you know at lunchtime, we like to see that interaction between… face to face students instead of screen to screen.”
Hitchens estimated that roughly 75 percent of students carry cell phones, which offer a security component between the students and their parents. However, there are no emergency provisions to the policy, which directs all emergency communication through the office.
