Some parents communicate with their children constantly during the school day — zipping off texts about soccer practice and pickup logistics or requesting up-to-the-minute updates. Others typically avoid communicating, but feel comfort knowing their kid is a few taps away in case of an emergency. Still others place safeguards on their children’s phones, blocking communications entirely.
In a month, as students return to schools transformed by a statewide bell-to-bell phone ban, the line between parents and children is set to go dark.
As we hurdle toward this major change, the Concord Monitor is assembling small groups to engage in candid conversations about the ramifications. Last week, four parents from Concord, Bow, and Epsom sat down to share their hopes, fears and burning questions about the ban.
The participants were:
Tanya Davis, an Epsom mother of a rising junior and senior at Pembroke Academy.
Debbie Brenner, a Concord mother of rising seventh-grade twins at Rundlett Middle School. Brenner is also an educator in the Manchester School District.
Sarah O’Connor-Willmott, a Concord mother of a rising fifth grader at Broken Ground School, a rising eighth grader at Rundlett Middle School, and two rising seniors at Concord High School.
Danielle Murphy, a Bow mother of a rising kindergartener and third grader at Bow Elementary School and a rising seventh grader at Rundlett Middle School.
All four parents said they were in favor of a statewide ban on personal electronic devices during instructional time, but one parent said she opposed prohibiting devices outside of class.
Despite their general support for the new law, the parents expressed serious concerns about its implementation, criticized the state for not providing any financial backing to facilitate the change and predicted the rollout would be rocky.
This conversation was held on July 17. It has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Do you communicate with your children during the school day?
TANYA said that she does; the other parents said that they generally don’t.
TANYA: Both of my kids are student-athletes and have jobs. So the majority of our communication via text is, “Mom, I forgot my lacrosse stick. Mom, my cleats are in the car. My game just got moved.” Sometimes, I don’t know until 2:15 p.m. that they were already put on a bus and they’re going somewhere. And a lot of times, that communication comes from my kids long before it comes from the school administration.
DEBBIE: In my parent role, they know I am not available. But part of that might come from how we do it at the school I work at in Manchester, so I know there is a way.
SARAH, you have high schoolers. Do you communicate with them during the school day?
SARAH: No, not really. They might call, and I might take it and refill the school lunch account or whatever, but we don’t text with them during the day.
Three of you have children at Concord’s Rundlett Middle School, which already has implemented a bell-to-bell ban. How often do they call you from the main office?
SARAH and DEBBIE said they never get calls from their children.
DANIELLE: If I get a call or text during school hours, I ask, “Where are you?” because there’s no reason my daughter should be able to text. She went to a different school prior to Rundlett, and they had a very different, more open policy, so my daughter has had the experience of transitioning to a school like Rundlett and she likes it. She agrees it has helped.
SARAH: Rundlett still has issues, but it’s way better than before this policy went into place. This new administration has really changed things and I think has a fair amount of trust from the student population. When we need to tell our kid something about sports or whatever, we’re texting right at the end of the day.
On a scale from 1 to 5 – with 1 being total opposition and 5 being total support – how do you feel about the bell-to-bell phone ban?
SARAH: I’m a 5. I think the most important part of it, though, is going to be how the district applies it and administers it. And so while I’m totally for the bill, I hope that the districts take the opportunity and put things in place that they need to.
DANIELLE: I’m a 5, because they’ve become a crutch. My big thought is I think the districts should be working on drafting these policies so there’s consistency across the state, because that’s going to be a key factor here for success.
TANYA: It’s difficult for me because I’m in support of banning cell phone use in the classroom. But I’m opposed to the bell-to-bell portion. I think a lot of my deviation has to do with the high school portion versus middle school. I don’t think cell phones should ever be allowed in middle school at all. But with the high school – we’re a hyper-scheduled family, unfortunately. Our cell phones contain our shared calendar, which is necessary for them to understand what their expectations are for that day.
What do you think next year is going to look like for your family?
TANYA: I think it’s going to be a large struggle for my son, who is very much reliant on his cell phone. And it will be difficult for me to communicate, but I don’t think it’ll be impossible. My daughter tends to not use her cell phone, at least during classroom hours anyway, and I think the only impact is going to be communication with her many sports teams. The entire paradigm has to shift. If we’re going to do this and we’re going to do it effectively, everyone has to change. So, in order for this to be effective and to be more easily integrated, the parents have to be behind it. The teachers have to find a way. The coaches have to be okay with it.
DEBBIE, where do you land on the 1 to 5 scale?
DEBBIE: As a parent, I’m a 5, just because of my children and their needs. They don’t need them.
Do you feel that will remain the case when your twins are in high school?
DEBBIE: Yes, because I won’t let them have it. They can use their friends’ phones. Or use the main office.
TANYA: Well, right now, the office doesn’t support it. When you’re in a high school, you’re going to have a line out the door. We have two people who work at our front office, and they have to manage kids signing in and out for open campus, visitors coming to the school, making the announcements, checking parking passes.
DEBBIE: But every room has a phone.
SARAH: But then that’s a disruption to the class.
TANYA: My daughter brought up a good point that some kids who are on their phones are just going to turn that distraction outward. So if they’re not on their phone, they’re just going to make a scene.
DEBBIE: Do it. They need to learn how to manage that. As a teacher, it needs to happen, and they can call during downtime. There’s not instruction for all 90 minutes, or 45 minutes. Call at the end.
SARAH: I agree, though, that kids who are struggling to self-regulate – maybe they can’t handle the environment – and the phone is becoming their way of dealing with that, they’re also avoiding and not learning that skill. And so this will expose kids who maybe need more support.
The new law does not provide specific instructions on how to implement a bell-to-bell ban. In the coming weeks, school boards and administrators will have to make difficult decisions on how exactly to craft their policies. What recommendations do you have for them?
TANYA: It needs to be broadly and uniformly implemented. They need to have their beginning-of-the-school-year packets include a signature page. And they need to make sure that their teachers are going to implement it across the board in a uniform fashion.
SARAH: I agree with that. I hope that we see them consulting other districts and aligning across similar style or size of districts. I also hope that we’ll see a framework that recognizes different age groups need different things. The older kids are going to need more access to an office phone to make those phone calls home.
DANIELLE: I think the other important thing is anticipating and addressing parents that are not in agreement with the ban and the potential abrasive response when their child doesn’t comply. My experience has been when there’s a situation between two children and there’s an abrasive parent on one side, sometimes the school doesn’t have policies to deal with that. They step back a little bit, and they don’t follow existing policies, so I think that’s going to be key. They need the backbone to be able to respond to that.
What questions do you have about the policies at your children’s schools?
TANYA: At lunchtime or even open campus – which both my kids qualify for – does that mean while they’re out, they can take their phones out but put them back away when they return? What if they decide to take lunch in the cafeteria?
SARAH: That logistical point that you’re making is going to be an issue at Concord High. They don’t have lockers. So where are they going to put them?
DANIELLE: What are the non-compliance actions going to be? Are they going to be geared towards the children or the parents? This is like parenting. If you tell your child, “This is going to be your consequence if you do this, or don’t do this,” and the parent doesn’t follow through, the child learns that they have more room to engage in that same behavior.
SARAH: I hope they hold the teachers accountable, too. And not just the parents and the students.
TANYA: All of the districts are operating at a substandard staffing level. So, following up, taking the phone, storing it in my desk, locking the desk, making sure I’m babysitting the phone, getting it to the administration, calling 10 times to get a parent to come down and get the phone and pick it up – that all takes time and money. And as much as the teachers probably want to enforce whatever rules are put in place, at some point, there’s a threshold.
DEBBIE: It’s like No Child Left Behind. You make the rule, then now what? The state is saying, ‘Do this.’ With what resources? Some kids are addicted, and when they’re not able to self-soothe, how are they getting that need met? Because it is a drug, and what supports are we providing? What interventions are available?
How do you think your opinions about the ban compare to those of other parents at your kids’ schools?
SARAH: It’s going to be very different depending on the kids’ age and the economic standing in a district. Some districts might not get as much pushback because they don’t have as many kids with phones.
TANYA: I think a lot of the high school parents are not going to be in support. I think a lot of them are going to feel like their kids are supposed to be learning to be independent adults, which is a farce. But it’s what we all hope for. Given that we’ve already gotten this far with the heavy dependence on that freedom, it’s going to be very difficult for them to pivot. As Danielle said, a lot of the parents who aren’t in support are going to openly resist and allow their children to openly resist.
DANIELLE: I think they should have a policy for parents to sign.
SARAH: I agree. And I do think it needs to come with consequences, and they need to be tiered consequences. It’ll be inconvenient for parents to pick up phones, but if your kid keeps doing it…
What do you think about the argument that children need phones in the event of an emergency?
TANYA: It’s a somewhat valid point. My kids have had circumstances where they’ve had to be evacuated or put into lockdown, and sometimes my kids communicate first, but sometimes I think it would have been better if the students hadn’t reached out. When my daughter went to Epsom Central School, there was an emergency. They were evacuated. The messaging coming from the middle schoolers was wild and way overblown. They waited, the school handled it well and communicated when they had a response that was accurate, and I thought that was perfect. On the other hand, there have been incidents at Pembroke Academy where the gym was evacuated. The kids were put in lockdown. I got information from my kids that made me feel better because social media was exploding with these overblown conversations, but my kids were texting me and telling me the truth.
DANIELLE: We don’t want people going to the school if there’s an emergency because it would disrupt emergency response planning. I’m not saying that there haven’t been local situations or even national ones where, as a parent, you would hope that you could have a conversation with your child if something happened. In those situations, we have to be confident that our kids would know what to do – that they would listen to authority in the school trying to direct them, keep them together, keep them calm.
DEBBIE: I would not want my children on their phone during an emergency.
What are your predictions for how this will go during the first few months of the school year?
SARAH: I don’t think it’s going to be going well even by winter break. It’s going to take a long time to shift to this, and I hope that it doesn’t fall apart just because it didn’t work well in the first month or first six months. I hope that there’s really a renewed interest and commitment to it.
When you say you don’t think it’s going to go well, what do you think will happen?
SARAH: I don’t think there’s going to be enough policies. It’s not going to be consistent enough. There’s not going to be the consequences in place. There’s going to be the outside drama from families and students rebelling because of what they’re hearing at home, and I think it’s going to be chaotic. I think it’s going to depend on the age level. It’s going to be harder at the upper levels. I just don’t think that there’s going to be enough time to garner the support, put the policies in place, get home support or staff support. I just don’t think there’s enough time to really be doing this this year, though I don’t think that it should mean that we don’t try.
DEBBIE: Who is keeping people accountable? The state says this needs to happen. Okay – what’s the penalty? You know we don’t fund school. We’re already breaking the Constitution. So, come on. We can’t fund schools, but we’re going to just take away cell phones. We’ll see if people will follow through.
TANYA: The bill doesn’t provide for accountability. Unless you escalate it to a lawsuit, it’s unlikely to be followed up on for a long time at the bare minimum.
SARAH: I think there needs to be consequences or maybe a financial incentive for a district that does comply.
TANYA: I echo Sarah’s prediction. I think it is unlikely that this will be fully enforced by the time my son graduates. I think the schools haven’t been given enough time to consider the ramifications, develop a well-thought policy, and then figure out how they’re going to implement and hold people accountable.
Are you a teacher or school administrator interested in participating in an upcoming conversation? Reach out at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.
