Saturday, July 16, 2005

Cell phone use ban during class considered for BHS

Principal says some students using text messages, photography for cheating

Haley Wachdorf News-Bulletin Staff Writer; hwachdorf@news-bulletin.com

Belen When school starts at Belen High School in August, the halls will echo with the sound of students talking, announcements over the public address system and bells ringing at the start and end of each class period.

But if a proposed change to the BHS student handbook is approved, the sound of ringing cell phones will not be part of that hubbub anymore.

At Tuesday's regular meeting of the Belen Board of Education, board members were given stacks of school site handbooks to review. Each year, if changes to handbooks are proposed, the board must review and vote on the changes.

Although the board has only begun reviewing the handbooks and the changes were not an action item for the meeting, board members wanted to get an early start on discussing proposed changes to the high school's policy regarding cell phone use on campus.

BHS Principal Tamie Pargas said the current policy on cell phones states that students are not to use the phones during class or other educational time. Students are allowed to use cell phones during lunch or between classes. But Pargas said that students are abusing the privileges of the policy, and teachers who are tired of constantly policing the use of cell phones asked for more restrictions on the devices at the school.

"I can't begin to tell you how disruptive cell phones are in our educational day," Pargas said. "We try to enforce having the cell phones out of sight during class time, but students will ask to go to the restroom and then they'll talk on their cell phone. They text message answers to tests. They actually take pictures of tests and send them to other students. It's hard to tell when they have a phone between their legs and they're text messaging with it. Phones are stolen on a daily basis. They've learned how to take out the memory card of a phone and place it in someone's else's phone so that the other person gets charges for all the calls. There's terrible harassment that goes on on cell phones."

Parents, Pargas said, have also contributed to the problem on occasion by calling their child's cell phone during class.

"I've been in classrooms personally where a cell phone rings during a lecture and the student, in some cases, will answer it," she said. "When that happens, I'll take the call phone and say 'This is Mrs. Pargas, can I help you?' And sometimes it's the student's parent who is calling them out of class and disrupting everyone's educational process. Now, nine times out of 10, when I explain to the parent why I wish they wouldn't call their child during classroom time, they understand. We have a system for parents to contact their child, and that system worked for us. We did just fine without cell phones in the classroom before."

Board members said they have already heard from some parents who have learned of the proposal. Judging from the phone calls he has received, Board President Julian Luna said he thinks that many parents give their children cell phones as a safety precaution.

"How are we going to respond when a parent calls us as board members?" he said. "Naturally, the first thing they are going to want to talk about is safety. Most parents, when they buy a cell phone for their daughter, the No. 1 reason is because of safety concerns. That's the kind of world we're living in."

Board Member Sam Chavez said he has heard that students with cell phones can be helpful in the case of a school-wide emergency and said parents probably view cell phones as a good tool to help them stay appraised of their student's movements as they leave school for other activities or to go to after-school jobs.

"The media was all over the issue of how many children were saved at Columbine because they had access to cell phones, and they were able to call and find out where safe zones were that they could go," he said. "I think a couple of these students are probably carrying phones because it gives their parents a sense of security, and once you tell a parent that they can no longer check on their child during the day, I think we're going to get a lot of calls about safety concerns."

Pargas said that, as a parent, she understands that it is helpful to have a portable line of communication with a teenager and was quick to point out that if the new policy is passed, students would not be banned from having cell phones on campus altogether, only from using them before 2:45 p.m. Likewise, she said, students are always at liberty to use the phones in the school office if they need to communicate with a parent during the school day and vice versa.

"If we had a safety issue occur, of course they can use their phones," she said. "But a cell phone doesn't make a student safe. I would tell my son, as a parent, that he can still have his cell phone. But I would say carry it in your backpack, in your pocket, and don't use it during the school day. Not during lunch, not during passing periods. There are phones in the offices."

Belen Superintendent Kenneth Griego said he hopes to have a decision from the board at the July 26 regular meeting. In the meantime, board members requested that school officials research the cell phone policies of other area school districts to see how they have handled the issue of cell phone use.

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