Three of four candidates for two open Arlington School Board seats have come out forcefully in favor of an “away-for-the-day” policy for student phone use, with exceptions available in narrow instances.
“School should be phone-free,” Paul Weiss, a retired county educator, said at a Thursday (Oct. 10) candidate forum sponsored by the Arlington Parents for Education (APE) advocacy organizations.
His views were echoed by fellow candidates James “Vell” Rives IV and Zuraya Tapia-Hadley, and drew a qualified endorsement from candidate Kathleen Clark.
Clark said that in addition to exemptions for students with specific medical needs, which all candidates seemed to support, students should be allowed access to their phones for teacher-directed classroom activities. But she, too, acknowledged that restrictions on accessibility are vital.
“We have to have kids focusing on the educator,” Clark said during the online forum.
Rives said recent policy changes restricting access to phones represent “a huge step in the right direction,” but voiced concerns that implementation has been “bumpy.”
“I want to see it through,” Rives said, including prohibitions on phone use during lunch periods and at recess.
“Students need to be interacting with their peers,” he said.
Tapia-Hadley said evidence was mounting that phone use is a major drag on educational achievement. Like others, she supported exemptions from the policy for medical reasons, and said the school system needed to do a better job ensuring variations in enforcement at individual schools do not take hold.
“It should be executed uniformly,” Tapia-Hadley said. “Uniformity builds trust.”
Arlington School Board members by December — just before the new School Board members arrive — are expected to approve a permanent policy on phone restrictions in schools. It will supplant temporary rules, established by Superintendent Francisco Durán, put in place at the start of the school year.
In crafting a final policy, School Board members will have to bear in mind guidance rolled out in September by the Virginia Department of Education, which is mandating phone-use regulations be in place across the commonwealth’s approximately 130 school districts by the end of 2024.
Arlington’s stopgap policy largely, but not entirely, comports with the state language.
At the Oct. 10 candidate forum, there was criticism from a number of candidates of the school system’s use of pouches for storage of phones, with several aspirants calling them unnecessary and, at $130,000 simply for a pilot program, too costly. But there seemed to be general agreement that the educational experience is improving now that teachers spend less time dealing with student-phone issues.
“For teachers to be the ‘phone police’ is overwhelming,” Weiss said.
Arlington Public Schools has developed an online survey to collect input before finalizing a permanent phone policy. It will be open through Oct. 20.
The full Arlington Parents for Education candidate forum will be posted on the organization’s website.
Rives, Weiss, Tapia-Hadley and Clark are vying to succeed incumbent School Board members David Priddy and Cristina Diaz-Torres, who are leaving the body after serving just single terms.
In May, Tapia-Hadley and Clark won the endorsement of the Arlington County Democratic Committee, and while that does not guarantee victory on Nov. 5, it does tilt the odds in their favor. The last non-Democrat to sit on the School Board was Dave Foster, who earned twin election victories in 1999 and 2003.
