Kalispell schools may allow cellphones

Cellphones may no longer be banned at school if Kalispell school board trustees approve a new policy.

The district is considering changing its cellphone, pager and electronic signaling equipment policy to allow students to use cellphones during their passing time and lunch periods. The existing policy allows high school students to use such devices outside the building at lunch.

The new policy also would give teachers the opportunity to use cellphones and other electronic devices as instructional tools.

The revised policy is based in part on a national trend toward using more handheld technology in the classroom, Superintendent Darlene Schottle said as she presented the policy at Tuesday’s regular board meeting.

The proposed policy “doesn’t require teachers to use [cellphones in class], but it gives them the option,” she said.

The policy prohibits unauthorized cellphone use during class time and does not allow students to access the Internet without permission at school, which takes up bandwidth on the network and could open the door to behaviors such as bullying.

Glacier High School tested the policy during a brief pilot program this spring. Rather than hailing administrators as heroes for allowing them to use cellphones during passing time, students were largely unimpressed by the relaxed rule, Principal Callie Langohr said.

“Almost 100 percent said, ‘It would have no impact on us — because we’re already doing it,’” she said. “‘In between classes we figure out how to do it, because you won’t let us do it.’”

Ben Young, a parent and science teacher at Glacier High, urged trustees not to approve the policy, which he called “unenforceable.” Young said allowing students a “carte blanche” use of cellphones during passing time would lead to an increased risk of cheating, “sexting,” bullying and classroom disruption.

“Our obligation to promote a safe learning environment trumps our desire to avoid conflict,” he said. “If it won’t improve our learning environment, if it will compromise school safety ... it doesn’t belong in the classroom.”

But Glacier High Activities Director Mark Dennehy said there already have been times when cellphones have proved useful at school.

“There’s also been a reality to the assistance that we have had with cellphones, using cellphones in investigations,” he said. “Someone that we suspect is involved in criminal activity, we search their phone and use their phone as part of the investigation process. It’s the same with cheating.”

But Dennehy also acknowledged the truth of Young’s comments about the difficulty of enforcing the policy.

“It is very challenging,” Dennehy said. “A lot of the conflicts we see are power struggles between a student and a staff member in the application of the rule.”

Trustee Tom Clark said he worried about the burden it might cause families if teachers started requiring students to use cellphones, iPads or other electronic devices in class.

“If teachers start using it as a learning device, is it going to pressure families into purchasing one?” he wondered.

Trustees John Michael Myers and Ivan Lorentzen said they didn’t think the solution was to ban cellphone use in school.

Myers compared teachers requiring cellphone use to teachers requiring students to use graphing calculators. When he attended Flathead High, the school provided calculators to students like him who didn’t want to purchase their own.

“The school district saw a need and met it,” he said, adding that the district may one day need to do the same with smartphones or other devices. “That’s a bridge we can cross when we get to it.”

Lorentzen said he foresees a not-too-distant day when the district will stop buying textbooks altogether and will instead supply electronics to allow students to access online information.

“That’s right around the corner,” he said. “The abuses bother me, [but] the solution and the progress that we need to embrace doesn’t involve getting rid of the technology.

“I don’t know what the solution is,” he added.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.