Georgia school shooting highlights fears about classroom cellphone bans

Huddling for security in school rooms as gunfire rang out, college students at Apalachee High School texted or known as their mother and father to allow them to know what was occurring and ship what they thought might be their remaining messages. One scholar texted her mom to say she liked her, including, “I am sorry I am not one of the best daughter.”

The Georgia faculty taking pictures that left 4 lifeless and 9 injured final week was each guardian’s worst nightmare, and one which highlights potential downsides to efforts amongst states, faculty districts and federal lawmakers to ban or prohibit entry to cellphones in school rooms.

The strikes to limit cellphone use in colleges have been pushed by considerations in regards to the impression screentime has on youngsters’s psychological well being and complaints from lecturers that cellphones have grow to be a continuing distraction within the classroom. However these against the bans say they reduce off a lifeline mother and father have to verify their youngsters are protected throughout faculty shootings or different emergencies.

“The very fact of the matter is mother and father and households can not depend on colleges to successfully talk with us in instances of emergency, and this has occurred again and again,” mentioned Keri Rodrigues, president of the Nationwide Dad and mom Union, an training advocacy group. “There’s a complete host of the explanation why mother and father are deeply involved about whether or not or not they will get well timed details about whether or not or not their children are protected.”

Nationally, 77% of U.S. colleges say they prohibit cellphones at college for non-academic use, in line with the Nationwide Heart for Training Statistics. However that quantity is deceptive. It doesn’t imply college students are following these bans or all these colleges are implementing them.

The restrictions have been trumpeted by each Republican and Democratic governors who hardly ever agree on different points.

In Arkansas, GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched a program for varsity districts to use for grants to buy pouches for college kids to maintain their telephones in through the faculty day. In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has urged faculty districts to limit cellphone use and is weighing whether or not to signal laws that will require colleges to enact restrictions.

“I’d hate to see one other faculty taking pictures be the explanation that we convey TVs into the classroom after which disrupt our kids’s training,” Newsom mentioned Friday. “As a result of, in essence, that’s what a cellphone is equal to — bringing a TV into the classroom and disrupting the power to get high quality tutorial time.”

However for a lot of college students caught within the Apalachee taking pictures, gaining access to their telephones was the one manner they might talk with family members throughout moments they feared might be their final.

“I really like you. I really like you a lot. Ma I really like you,” Junior Julie Sandoval texted her mom. “I’m sorry I’m not one of the best daughter. I really like you.”

Close by, Sandoval mentioned, one other scholar was on the cellphone telling their mom, “They’re taking pictures up the college! They’re taking pictures up the college!”

However advocates of college cellphone restrictions warn that permitting entry to telephones throughout shootings or different emergencies may put college students in much more hazard.

“What’s much more essential to me is their security,” mentioned Kim Whitman, co-founder of the Telephone-Free Faculties Motion, a gaggle that advocates for colleges to undertake insurance policies conserving cellphones off and away from college students. “If my youngster was on the cellphone with me they usually missed steerage from the instructor as a result of they had been distracted by their cellphone they usually weren’t protected, that’s a worse state of affairs in my thoughts.”

Whitman mentioned she understands the considerations about conserving mother and father knowledgeable and that is why a key half for any phone-free faculty is being proactive in speaking about emergencies.

Balancing security and fogeys’ considerations guided a cellphone ban at Grand Island Senior Excessive, the most important highschool in Nebraska, which rolled out a brand new coverage in January that requires college students to maintain telephones out of sight and of their baggage or pockets, silenced or off throughout faculty hours.

“One of many important questions that oldsters requested us was, ‘What if Sally or Johnny doesn’t have their cellphone if, God forbid, an lively taking pictures occurs or there’s some form of disaster within the constructing?’” mentioned Jeff Gilbertson, the college’s then-principal who now runs management coaching on the state Board of Training.

However the faculty does lockdown coaching to remind college students of the hazards that telephones could cause throughout emergencies.

“We coach our children to maintain telephones silenced. You don’t need to be speaking on the cellphone after we’re in lockdown, as a result of that will reveal your location to an lively shooter,” he mentioned.

College students in different faculty shootings have used cellphones to alert authorities or their mother and father. Through the 2022 faculty taking pictures in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 21 folks, a fourth-grader begged for help in a sequence of 911 calls. College students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, despatched mother and father and posted chilling movies through the 2018 taking pictures that killed 17 folks.

The Apalachee faculty taking pictures was a painful reminder for Brandi Scire of why she obtained a cellphone for her daughter, now a highschool sophomore in Broward County, Florida. Each her youngsters went to colleges close by Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty throughout that mass taking pictures.

Scire’s son’s faculty was on lockdown and thought it was a drill till she texted him on his cellphone. Scire bought a cellphone for her daughter the next yr due to that.

Broward County colleges now require college students to maintain their telephones saved away and in airplane mode, however Scire has informed her daughter to maintain her cellphone on and together with her.

“It isn’t about me texting my daughter throughout common faculty or something like that,” Scire mentioned. “It is a security measure and I am sorry, I can not let that go.”

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This story was up to date to appropriate that the college taking pictures in Uvalde, Texas, occurred in 2022, not 2020.

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Related Press writers Jeff Amy in Winder, Georgia, Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, and Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco contributed to this report.