A proposal to restrict access to cellphones at Arlington high schools remains up for debate as a School Board decision deadline approaches.
With the decision date set for Dec. 12, Board members have one major decision left to make related to high schools:
- Should the school system follow directives from the state government to ban phone use for most students throughout the school day, or
- Should phones be allowed during the school day outside of instructional periods?
“I’m really wrestling with this,” Chair Mary Kadera said at the School Board’s Nov. 14 meeting, when school-system leadership rolled out a proposal for compliance with the broader restrictions recommended by the Youngkin administration and the Virginia Department of Education.
A full-day ban on phone use seems to have the support of Arlington’s school-based staff but the opposition of students, at least among those who responded in two rounds of public comment.
Only about 14% of students who responded said they supported the proposal, compared to 86% of staff respondents. Parents, meanwhile, were split almost exactly 50-50, according to a staff presentation.
“I think that was what we all thought was going to happen. That was what we were all expecting,” Board member Cristina Diaz-Torres said of the split response.
If the Board ultimately adopts a full ban on phone use during the academic day, “we owe it to our students to be really clear why we think it is in their best interest to restrict their access to phones,” Kadera said.
But her board colleague, Bethany Sutton, said students alone were not the only ones with a stake in the final decision.
“We are short-changing ourselves if we are not thinking about our educators when we are thinking about who this is going to impact,” Sutton said.
“We have a responsibility to our staff as well as our students,” she said.
The school system has had an interim policy in place since the start of the 2024-25 school year, and all 130-plus school divisions across the commonwealth are required to have a permanent plan adopted by January.
With the exception of the question of access to phones at the high-school level, Arlington’s proposed policy seems to align with the state recommendations.
The permanent policy up for consideration in Arlington would give individual schools the power to decide where students would be required to keep their phones when they were off-limits.
Marku said that the Student Advisory Board, comprised of students leaders across the system, was strongly opposed to continued use of phone pouches, storage devices currently being test-driven during pilot programs at a number of schools.
Staff also plan to “take another look” at the interim policy regarding how the rules about phones being put away in class are enforced, Marku said.
“One thing we’ve heard a lot from folks is they don’t want teachers to be the ‘cellphone police’ — teachers don’t want to be playing tug-of-war with students over phones,” he said. “The goal here is put that with the administrators, not the teachers.”
Whether Superintendent Francisco Durán will amend any of his current proposals before the Dec. 12 meeting remains to be seen.
“There’s a lot, a lot, a lot of feedback we’ve received, and I’m sure we will continue to receive some feedback before we take final action,” he said.
Photo via Christian Wiediger/Unsplash
