Lackawanna, N.Y. (WBEN) - Lackawanna City School District officials on Monday held the first of two town hall informational meetings for parents, students and members of the community to learn more about the new no cell phones policy they will be implementing in September.
School Superintendent Nadia Nashir says this was a good opportunity to gauge how both students and parents are feeling about the new policy, as well as field questions and address their concerns.
"I think the majority of our parents are on board. There is a handful of families that are concerned, especially now, with the violence in schools. They want to be able to get a hold of their children right away, and we understand that," said Nashir.
"We're trying to help them shift their thinking, we know what we're doing in the sense that we have emergency plans, we work with local law enforcement, our teachers are trained. You know, they've given us their children when they were in kindergarten until right now, so they just need to trust us and that we will ensure that if they want to get ahold of their child, they can call the main office, they can email their child or they can use the remind app that we have district-wide."
Nashir noted that the main reason for this new policy implementation is that cell phones are the main distraction for students and it takes away from their learning time and attention.
"Teachers cannot compete with 85 notifications that students receive in 43 minutes, we just need to be cognizant of that, and we can't put that on the teachers or police," said Nashir. "Every teacher will have their own way of doing things. This is the easiest way, phone away. We don't want to see the phone and teachers don't need to argue if there's an issue, we call administration. And I think that students will have less interest or less motivation to use their cell phones when the majority of their classmates don't have their phones."
The main concerns and questions of the parents for the district came down to enforcement of the policy.
A few parents asked what would happen when students place burner phones in the unlockable pouch or destroy the pouch itself.
Nadir explained there will be certain actions taken corresponding to the number of infractions to the policy, such as school suspensions for regular repeat offenders and charging for those who damage school property.
"If they deliberately cut the pouches, because they're just made out of vinyl, and they are unusable, there's a consequence, right? If they bring in a burner phone, there's a consequence for that. We know that our students are going to be creative, our job is to respond to it effectively and immediately. If we ignore it or we look the other way, then we have a bigger problem. So we're going to very swift, and we're going to address those issues that are that come to our attention very quickly, and our parents will also be informed about their children's behavior."
One student said she was previously unable to email her BOCES teacher and parents in class because of a firewall installed by the school.
Nadir said they will change that for this upcoming school year and will continue to make adjustments as the school year goes on.