Smithville ISD Votes to Store Student Devices Under New State Cellphone Law

By Kristen Meriwether, Publisher

When the state legislature passed House Bill 1481 this session, it made a lot of headlines, claiming the law would ban cellphones in classrooms.

But the law actually gives school districts a choice to ban cellphones entirely, or allow students to store them. And the law doesn’t just cover cellphones, but includes all personal wireless communication devices, which include smartphones, flip phones, tablets, smartwatches, radios, and any other electronic device capable of telecommunication or digital communication while on school property during the school day.

The law, primarily authored and introduced by state Rep. Caroline Fairly, R-Amarillo (House District 87), has good intentions, aiming to reduce distractions in the classroom and improve mental health and social development for students.

But the broad language punted the responsibility of ironing out the details to school districts, and at Monday’s Smithville ISD school board meeting the district had to make its first choice: ban or store?

Newly appointed Superintendent Molley Perry said the feedback from campus leadership teams was overwhelmingly in favor of storing devices over banning, a sentiment she said was shared by fellow superintendents she spoke to around the state.

“We know that before and after school, those devices are very helpful for families to be able to communicate about drop-off, pickup, etc.,” she said at Monday’s meeting.

The board spent nearly half an hour going through numerous questions, including what devices would need to be stored, if devices like watches could be kept out if turned into airplane mode, and if athletic periods would be excluded.

Some of the questions indicated just how reliant we’ve become on the devices for everyday tasks and basic communication.

Board member Michael Hancock asked if bilingual students who use Google Translate to communicate would be excluded from the policy. Board member Josh Magden asked band director Wayne King if the band uses metronome apps during practice.

King said they use it for learning drill, music, and tuning, but he joked they did all those things before cellphones and could go back to those methods, inciting a chuckle from the administrators in attendance.

Board member Chelsa Vinklarek wanted to get input from athletic director Layne Neumann about what apps the athletes were using to keep track of workouts and times to determine if athletic periods needed to be excluded.

But the biggest question: how will the policy be monitored and what will the penalty be for taking the device out of storage during the school day?

“Once we know the direction in terms of banning versus storing, that will give us as an administration what we need to go back and continue those conversations,” Perry said. “We had the site-based team give some of that feedback, but we do need to have some of those more detailed conversations.”

She added, “When we develop the administrative regulations, we do have some leeway in saying, what is the school day. In the law, it does not define school day, and so we will need to determine what that looks like in Smithville ISD.”

While the policy has not been formally written, Perry said the discussions they’ve had so far would require students to store devices in their backpacks, and potentially lockers if the student did not have a backpack. They did not want to have staff be responsible for the storage of devices, or purchase storage bags.

As for enforcement? Board president Grant Gutierrez pointed out the law seemed very unenforceable by the state, leaving that to the campuses.

“My only ask of you guys is to put into a policy something that is as easy to enforce as possible. So if it's out of sight, then it's out of sight. And if it's in sight, then it becomes mine for the rest of the day, or whatever it's going to be,” Gutierrez said. “But there has to be a clear delineation, and we have to start the year super strong, because if we don't, then it's a slippery slope, and we're never going to bring that back.”

Vinklarek said she agreed, joking she’s already heard kids scheming to bring in old phones to “store” while keeping their real phone on them.

“I don't love the idea of our children leaving school without their device, because it's no longer just for fun. For a lot of kids, that's their only way to contact a ride, or if there's an emergency at home. I don't want to see a case where the phone is locked in the office, waiting on mom or dad or until the end of the week,” she said. “But it's going to take some kind of severe punishment. I do think it needs some kind of severe punishment to send a message early, of, it's just zero tolerance.”

The board voted 5-0 to store devices instead of ban. Board members Chris Hinnant and Candice Parsons were not present for the meeting.

Superintendent Perry will work with district staff to create a full policy that will need to be implemented before the first day of school, which is Aug. 13.