Middletown students returning to school Tuesday had to adhere to a new district policy for cellphone use.
“An away for the day policy, which encumbers really any type of electronic communication device. It was really challenging to compete with students and their cellphones during instructional time,” said Jessica Alfone, superintendent of Middletown Township Public Schools.
Students in Cherry Hill, also starting school Tuesday, saw a similar policy change. Superintendents in both districts said they feel their policies strike a middle-of-the-road balance between locking phones away or letting them stay on the student’s person. Cherry Hill Superintendent Kwame Morton Sr. says his policy came after polling teachers and parents, and having lengthy meetings with students.
“During instructional time, students are prohibited from displaying or utilizing a wireless communication device. That would be cellular phone, iPad, Airpods or earphones,” said Morton Sr. “What we heard from the survey process all the way to my discussions with individual students was that students agreed that devices presented a negative aspect to their day, but they didn’t want us to completely and totally ban the devices outright from school. So the request was to find a happy medium and that was, allow students to maintain their devices in their bags, but to just ban them during instructional time.”
In addition to preserving quality instructional time, Alfone says they’re hoping to see a positive impact on student’s social and emotional health, noting the increase in mental health challenges since the pandemic and the subsequent increase in cell phone use among kids.
“We definitely see a huge increase in depression and anxiety. We even see almost 50% of youth 13 – 17 years old reporting cyberbullying going on online,” said Ashley Morolla, director of the Center for Trauma Services at CarePlus New Jersey. “And these youth also know that being online is contributing to these feelings of anxiety and depression. All we can hope for is that more children get the opportunity to put the phones away, shut it off for a bit, even turning off the notifications, will give them that relief.”
