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by Lisa Scagliotti, Editor, Waterbury Roundabout
Photos by Daniel Miller
As the new school year settles into a routine, students at Harwood Union Middle/High School are getting accustomed to having cellphones away during the school day.
Meanwhile, some school board members have registered their discomfort with the decision to spend $21,000 in federal funds for the phone pouches in use and even more say the district should consider creating a formal policy addressing cellphones in all schools.
At the start of the school year, Harwood’s administration rolled out a new protocol aimed at making classrooms and all school spaces cellphone-free during the school day. Students are required to store their mobile phones, smartwatches and Bluetooth headphones away in their backpacks or lockers for the day, or alternatively they could leave them at home or in their vehicles, for those who drive to school.
To ensure phones do not make appearances in class, students were issued individual pouches that lock with a magnetic closure that they open at a special station when they arrive and then seal. At the end of the day, students do the steps in reverse, opening the pouch at the magnet station to remove their devices as they head out of school.
High school students are allowed to have their phones in their locked pouches in their backpacks for the day. Middle schoolers in grades 7 and 8 must store them in their lockers.
The pouches and the magnetic base stations cost $21,000 with the California company Yondr. The purchase was funded with the final allocation of federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funding known as ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief). Schools across the United States received funding through the program over the past several years. Harwood’s share was $4.8 million and the funding had a Sept. 30 deadline this year to be spent.
Harwood is one of multiple schools across Vermont joining a growing number of schools to limit cellphone use and the distractions it brings to learning, socializing and the overall school environment.
School leaders so far have remarked on increased engagement among students with phones no longer available. At last week’s school board meeting, student representatives to the board said they thought the new routine was going smoothly. “The Yondr pouches have been working. People aren’t taking their phones out in class,” junior Grady Hagenbuch said. “People are playing cards in study hall.”
Last spring, school leaders announced that the new routine would begin with the new school year but details on how the process would work, consequences for not following it, etc. were not shared until this summer. The decision to purchase the Yondr pouches was made during the summer and the school board did not have a chance to discuss the matter or vote on it as part of the school’s ESSER plan until its Aug. 28 meeting. School officials said they requested and received special permission from state education officials before going ahead with the purchase.
At the Aug. 28 board meeting, however, several school board members questioned the expense and the apparent new policy in place without any formal action by the board.
“It seems a very significant issue that should have some clear guidelines,” said Fayston board member Danielle Dukette, who serves on the board’s policy committee. “I feel as though it should be elevated to the point of policy for the school district, because not just high schoolers, not just middle schoolers, have cell phones in school. …I feel like it should be codified in a more significant way.”
Fellow Fayston board member Mike Bishop, who chairs the board’s finance committee, brought up the expense as a concern.
“The problem that I have, or that I keep going back to, is spending $22,000 on it,” Bishop said, adding that he looked at cellphone policies in other districts that stop short of purchasing any equipment. “They were all able to come forward with a policy without spending any any taxpayer money or any money that could go to other things.”
Directing his question to the superintendent, Bishop said, “How would you justify spending 22 grand on this, on this procedure, policy, or whatever we’re calling it, when we just laid off teachers last year and we’re facing another budget – let’s call it a crisis, I guess. Don’t you think there was other things we could have spent $22,000 on?”
Leichliter explained that the issue bubbled up “as a grassroots issue” among staff at Harwood that resulted in the new guidelines that have been implemented with the start of this school year.
“I think it’s important to remember this was not the superintendent issuing a dictate, it was not even the high school principals. It was an ongoing faculty discussion and our teachers who are the professionals in the classroom have determined [cellphones] are a distraction to the educational environment. I’ve heard that since I interviewed for the position,” said Leichliter who joined the district in mid-2022.
School leaders could have used other supply funds for the purchase, he pointed out. “It was a building-based decision, and we had remaining funds,” he said.
Dukette added that she understood the need to use the federal funding and the desire to address cellphone use. But she offered an example of another way the funds could have been used, noting that students had raised issues in the spring around the need for better-furnished quiet study places in the building.
“I wish in the future we would take a step back and see are there things on the table” to consider for such opportunities, she said.
Not all feedback was critical. Multiple board members praised the new cellphone rules including the use of the pouches. Moretown member Ben Clark was amont those who said they liked the suggestion to create a district policy around the issue.
“I want to say thank you for finding a novel way to cover the expense of the cellphone pouches,” Waitsfield member JB Weir remarked to school administrators at the table.
In the board’s two meetings since the school year began, only one community member has spoken during public comment about the cellphone changes. Former board chair Caitlin Hollister from Waterbury attended on Aug. 28 and said she applauded the school administration’s leadership “to try something new” on the issue.
Leichliter told board that it would be appropriate for the board to addressed the issue with a district-wide policy. He also suggested that all of the board read the best-selling book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt that documents research into the harmful impacts of cellphones, social media, etc. on youth mental health.
The board needed to take a vote on the amended ESSER plan to reflect final adjustments to how the funding was allocated including the Yondr pouch purchase. The measure was approved 8-4. Based on the board’s weighted voting process, however, the yes votes represented just 53.55% in favor.
Voting against the measure were Bishop and Dukette and Waterbury members Elizabeth Brown and Dan Roscioli. Waterbury member Victoria Taravella was absent, and board Chair Ashley Woods of Warren did not vote. Student members’ votes are not counted in the board tally. Two of the four student members – Hagenbuch and Ellie Bunkingham – abstained; students Celia Wing and Cashel Higgins – voted in favor.
Despite the discussion, the school board has not charged its policy committee yet with drafting a policy to address cellphone use across the district.
At the Sept. 11 meeting, student representative Ellie Buckingham said the student board members have drafted a survey to collect data from students about the new protocol and that they would present their findings at an upcoming board meeting.
The short survey would ask students if they actually are using the pouches, she said. It also was to ask if they felt more connected with peers and if their learning environment has improved as a result of the change and to share. Another question was to ask students to share a positive experience related to the cellphone rules. Several board members suggested rephrasing the question to solicit a wider range of responses.
“The survey looks a little biased when you say ‘what’s a positive experience’?” suggested Moretown member Steve Rosenberg. He suggested “neutralizing” the language to ask students about their overall experience.
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Categories: Education
This is typical dumb. How can you hire people that make decisions like this? I apologize to anyone that thinks this is okay. Just my opinion, you can have yours. But I still think it was a bad way to use workers tax money.
Your right Skippy. I am baffled that we got sooo much Covid money and used it for non Covid purposes…. This Biden/Harris administration is a complete failure for this great nation. Not to mention that our own people in Vermont abused taxpayer money AGAIN.
How many carbons did this use? How could have that money instead been invested in reducing carbons. How did not investing that money to generate wealth create less opportunity to reduce the carbons?
Great, now we will all die from global warming. Good job
What’s wrong with keeping a radioactive snitch next to your reproductive organs that constantly summon your mind away from whatever task was at hand? Why must you all be “available” 24/7? I had a “bag-phone” from 1995 to a primitive cellphone, finally ditching that in 2008.. When I moved to Vermont in 2001 I would pull over to get service & folks would stop & ask if I needed help! You can keep the tracking device, I find them creepy, and that all your moves are being tracked & listened to..SM.
Correct. Now theses systems are REQUIRED to be built in to all new cars at YOUR EXPENSE. What’s the worst that can happen? Safe and sane trust trust. No hackers can get in we have “security”.
“Elon Musk asked to ‘turn off’ Teslas in Russia as he makes superchargers free for people fleeing Ukraine” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/elon-musk-ukraine-russia-tesla-b2027067.html
However, wasting time/money doing check-in/checkout is complete mental illness. This is time and effort that should be put towards getting reading and math over the 50% proficient mark. What this is doing, is conditioning children to be good little slaves to the state apparatus. When they are older this will be a similar muscle memory for folks that want to use their guns and ammo. Just check it in to your government approved storage facility folks.
So here’s an Idea. Just to get Utes used to consequences why not mandate no cell phone in the school building. Those that fail to comply first offense 3 days 1 hour detention second 5 days 1 hr and so on and so forth
Detentions are punitive, so are rarely issued. Restorative Justice is the new norm. Not sure how it could be applied here.
2 issues here, Brian has a better and cheaper option than the faraday bags costing $21,000.
In order to assure the desired outcome, “weighted voting “? Seriously, Orwellian concepts? Some pigs are more equal than others?
Secondly, this is a test bed for totalitarian measures to be used and further indoctrinate Vermont students in marxist ways. Yes, this school board says you shall subvert individual freedoms as deemed necessary by “authorities”-
We decided that by “weighted voting “.
Add the Mad River Valley to the growing list of liberal/ marxist locales. ms. rep. laura sibilia and a hundred other “socialist legislators” must be very happy, seeing this happen.
The technology and strategy aside, since it’s efficacy and practicality/convenience is yet to be seen, what is striking about this article is the phrase: “the final allocation of federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funding”…It likely as “final” as when the Vermont legislature pretends to adjourn in the spring. It is likely as “final” as the COVID emergency free motel room program.
Is this part of the conservation efforts? It’s a great first step for people to disconnect from their propaganda phones, perhaps the greatest device ever invented for spreading lies and “disinformation” as they say. Popularity contests/ only fans for the girls and porn for the boys does not make for a healthy student amoung other things.
Perhaps next few classes could be about fiscal responsibility, clearly somebody in this group has a brain.
It used to be in town meetings an old-time farmer would stand up and say something clearly logical and cutting to the point. Just like the gentleman who said, “why are we spending $22k on this?”. In times past people would acknowledge the wisdom and vote in favor.
The best thing these students could do is disconnect from the hive mind, read a book, see the world, do things with friends and family.
21 Grand !!! THAT is the insanity that is running rampant in Vermont. It would cost NOTHING to create a rule that cell phones are not allowed in school! Violators should then have a consequence. This madness in this state needs to stop !
More wasted tax money. I might be wrong, but I thought all phones had an off button. Shut them down and put them in your locker!!
But with no phones, where do they get the answers to the quiz they’ll be taking ??
The company (not sure if they actually manufacture this product or where) that came out the big winner in this episode is Yondr.
I moved up here from Roanoke, VA, an Asheville wanna-be town just 50 miles north of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. They have been collecting all sorts of “cool cities” funding and creating surcharges in town (extra fee for non-impervious driveways, extra food service tax, separate billing for trash pick-up that used to be part of RE Tax) and then awarding contracts to entities like CitiBike (bikes and rental equipment/software underwritten by CitiBank) and some electric scooter company (also rentals) and the like ever since 2008 and the whole “Hopey-Changey” thing surfaced as the New Left’s modus operandi.
Once these programs get their contract, it doesn’t matter if it’s a success or failure.
Most of the time, it’s a bust. You’d think towns would see what the success rate is elsewhere, in places the same nonsense was tried before, but success is not what the objective is. The objective is popularity and getting some new shiny thing or program… more paper-shuffling, pencil-pushing, spreadsheeting, meeting-holding, etc.
I’m just laughing at all the crap Burlington is doing that Roanoke has already done, which copy-catted from Asheville, which probably got it form yet somewhere else, like Portland or San Fran… I even made a comedy video about it over 10 years ago when I was joining local Roanoke film fests… Of course, the cliques of the ‘Noke wokie artistes sneered thru the whole 5 minutes of it. LOL. (I have a couple of them uploaded to my StarCityFame YouTube channel… It’s called “My City Roanoke” and still available.)
I would like to see the superintendent explain in public how this qualifies to expend “Covid relief” money. As an ex government employee this is called: MISAPPROPRIATION of funds for which there are judicial consequences. Oh wait. I forgot. This is a SCHOOL system and those things dont apply because its all “for the children”
I suppose you could make the case for it being COVID relief since the kids are way behind in their educations due to the COVID lockdowns and keeping their phones away from them in school will help them catch up…besides that it’s just more public money going to a private company that furnishes the bags. Wondering what kind of campaign contributions were made by this Yondr outfit?
Glad to see COVID money went to something so stupid. I guess this is but a small part of all the lost COVID funds that we property owners had to make up for with our 14%. The solution to this is simple….LEAVE THE PHONE AT HOME!
In parts of Europe, private and public areas can be under the coverage of cell phone jamming devices to inactivate their communications. A movie theater or museum can utilize these. Our communications laws forbid their use. In schools, even without communication enabled, phones can be used as a crutch or cheating tool so it may make more sense to prevent all access to them by students during the school day.
What perhaps has not been addressed is how to treat the withdrawal symptoms of those who have their phones in their hands but are unable to use them…the cold sweats, the shivers, the teeth grinding etc…
Just think our forefathers crossed the country, with no roads, serious threats to their lives from other men, animals and the weather.
Our future generation of leaders can’t get by an hour without their phone?
Oh my.
Hey Kids,
Here’s something information to watch, might make your life a whole lot better, wish I had known this years ago.
https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2024/10/10/joe-rogan-episode-that-everyone-needs-to-see-asap/
We could drop our health care costs by 95%, if we changed our diet and moved around a bit. We are what we eat, we are what we put into our brains and our soul is also based upon what we feed it.
Choose your path wisely.
Those are some big, expensive ‘magnetic closures’.
Are they collecting data from these students and their cell phones?
If there’s no law preventing it the answer is most likely, yes.