Beacon Schools Weigh Cellphone Restrictions

Superintendent says changes possible in the fall

The Beacon City School District is considering changes to its policy on student cellphone usage, a thorny subject that many schools have wrestled with. 

Superintendent Matt Landahl said on Wednesday (June 12) that changes could be implemented in the fall to “strengthen our policy” but provided no details. Landahl said he plans to update the community this summer. 

The district’s existing policy, adopted in 2021, says that phones are allowed during “non-instructional time” if students follow the district’s code of conduct and the acceptable use policy. According to the code, teachers and administrators can confiscate phones if students are violating the policy. 

However, several parents asked the school board in April for more restrictions. One parent, Hana Ramat, a psychotherapist whose son will enter Rombout Middle School in the fall, said this week that she hopes the district will require students to turn in their phones while at school. 

Echoing comments made in recent years by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Ramat said there’s an “epidemic of mental illness” among children and teens. Research, she said, suggests that smartphones, which were introduced about 20 years ago, have been a major factor. 

“Especially with young girls, the research is very clear and the impacts are severe,” Ramat said, citing eating disorders, depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia as conditions all potentially exacerbated by online culture. “The social media algorithms lead you down these roads, and it’s very disturbing how fast it goes,” she said. 

Ramat said she and her husband don’t plan to give their son a smartphone until his mid-teen years. In the interim, they’re considering a phone without internet access or a device like an Apple Watch that he can use for basic communications. 

Other schools in the region, both public and private, have adopted or are close to instituting no-phone policies. 

Haldane High School last year introduced “No-Cell Motels” — repurposed shoe organizers in which students place their phones during class. One school year into the policy, “there are fewer distractions and the bathroom breaks are much shorter,” said Tom Virgadamo, the president of the Haldane teachers’ union. 

The private Manitou School in Philipstown and Hudson Hills Academy in Beacon have also banned phones in class. The Kingston school board is considering a proposal requiring middle school and high school students to leave their phones in locked bags, while the Newburgh school board agreed last fall to a deal with Yondr, a company that manufactures locking phone pouches. 

Something like a Yondr pouch in Beacon would free teachers of the burden of policing for phones while instructing, Ramat said. It would also restore face-to-face time, or “the precious childhood time of connecting and building relationships,” during lunch, recess and in the hall, she said. 

John Drew, a Beacon resident who is a digital media professor at Adelphi University in Long Island, also spoke to the school board in April. He said Wednesday that, even at the college level, many students believe they need access to their phones at all times. “It almost makes it sad to be a teacher, because the devices are more powerful than any teaching strategy I can come up with,” he said. 

Drew empathizes with his daughter, who will also enter Rombout in the fall, because so many of her friends have phones. “It’s impossible for her to not want to have the access that her friends have” to social media and the internet, he said. 

While a 2020 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics showed that more than 75 percent of schools nationwide have banned cellphones except for academic use, Sarah Jaafar, a Beacon High School junior who is a student adviser to the school board, offered counterpoints during the April meeting. 

If the district implements further restrictions, it should start with younger students, “so when students go into the high school they’re using the phone more as a tool than a plaything during classes,” she said. 

Jaafar also explained that she drives other students to and from school every day and often needs to communicate with them after classes have begun. “I need to know who’s coming with me, who’s staying after,” she said. “If I’m staying after, I need to let them know ahead of time, so they can find a ride.”

She also raised the issue of emergencies. “What if there’s an emergency at home that I need to be told of immediately? I need to be able to get that text from my parents,” Jaafar said. “I agree there are a lot of negative impacts but it’s not a one-size-fits-all type of thing.”