The Fairfax County Public Colleges in Virginia (FCPS) is launching a pilot program for a number of center colleges to ban college students’ cellphone entry throughout the faculty day, beginning within the 2024-25 faculty yr.
Seven colleges will take part within the pilot program: Frost Center College, Irving Center College, Jackson Center College, Poe Center College, Robinson Center College, Thoreau Center College and Twain Center College.
The colleges “will be phone-free during the school day in order to limit classroom disruptions and improve student engagement and learning,” FCPS stated on its web site.
In the course of the week of September 2, college students attending colleges within the pilot program will obtain a mobile phone storage pouch, known as a Yondr pouch, which is magnetic and prevents college students from utilizing their telephones, together with for social media, textual content messages and telephone calls.
STATE LAWMAKERS PUSH FOR BAN ON PHONES IN SCHOOLS
Cell phones are locked into “Yondr” pouches earlier than individuals enter an exhibition on the Brooklyn Museum on November 22, 2019, in New York Metropolis. (Getty Photographs)
College students will probably be chargeable for their very own Yondr pouch and can convey it with them to highschool daily.
Upon arriving in school every morning, college students will safely lock their telephone of their Yondr pouch and carry it inside their backpack. Airpods should be secured within the pouch or positioned within the college students’ backpacks whereas smartwatches should be turned off or placed on airplane mode.
In conditions the place there’s a household emergency, dad and mom could contact the varsity’s entrance workplace.
“The purpose of the pilot program is to create a more engaged learning environment for students, free of distraction from cell phones and social media,” FCPS stated on its web site. “Studies show that students who use their cell phones during instructional time focus less, learn less, and achieve lower grades.”
College students will probably be chargeable for their very own Yondr pouch and can convey it with them to highschool daily. (Getty Photographs)
The brand new cellphone coverage will probably be enforced bell to bell every day in school.
College students will maintain onto their telephones all through the day however is not going to use them till their pouches are opened on the finish of the varsity day at a Yondr unlocking station.
If a pupil forgets their pouch, they need to retailer their cellphone within the entrance workplace for the varsity day, and it is going to be returned to the scholar after faculty.
Within the occasion {that a} pupil damages or loses their pouch, faculty employees will accumulate the telephone or pouch and ship it to the entrance workplace for the rest of the varsity day, and the scholar will probably be assessed an $18 substitute charge.
In the course of the 2024-25 faculty yr, seven colleges will probably be taking part within the pilot program. (AP Photograph/Kiichiro Sato, File)
This comes after Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an government order final month directing the Virginia Division of Training “to draft guidance for public school divisions to adopt local policies and procedures establishing cell phone-free education.”
“The necessity of implementing cell-phone free education in Virginia’s K-12 public schools is increasingly evident,” Youngkin wrote within the order. “Parents, public health professionals, educators, and other stakeholders across the Commonwealth are expressing concern over the alarming mental health crisis and chronic health conditions affecting adolescents, such as depression and anxiety, driven in part by extensive social media usage and widespread cell phone possession among children.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“Cellphone-free education will significantly reduce the amount of time students can be on phones without parental supervision,” he added.
Different faculty districts in Virginia and elsewhere, together with California, New York, Texas and Georgia, have additionally begun implementing insurance policies proscribing cellphone use throughout the faculty day, with many using the Yondr pouches.
