New school cellphone policy landscape across Minnesota includes locked pouches

NINA MOINI: Keeping on our back to school theme here, it's the last few days of summer for many students across Minnesota. And when kids go back to school Tuesday, many will have to follow a new cell phone policy. Earlier this year, the state legislature mandated districts to create a cell phone use policy if they didn't have one. They have to be implemented by March, 2025. But many districts decided to go ahead and get one in place at the start of the school year.

Most districts went with one of two options-- no phones allowed from bell to bell, or limited access to phones only during lunch and passing time. Joining us now are two superintendents who each went with one of those options. So Matt Grose is the superintendent of Grand Rapids, Bigfork Public Schools in Northern Minnesota. And Taylor Topinka is the superintendent of United South Central Public Schools in Wells in Southern Minnesota. Thank you both for being here. I'm sure it's a busy time of year for you.

TAYLOR TOPINKA: It certainly is. But thanks for having us.

NINA MOINI: Of course. And Taylor, I want to start with you. The school board in your area last week approved $15,000 to buy what's called Yondr Pouches, which people may be familiar from concerts and comedy shows, a pouch that locks your phone, and that seems on the more restrictive end. Can you tell us a little bit about why you all went this route?

TAYLOR TOPINKA: Yeah, absolutely. So this has been a little bit of time in the works for us here. And like you mentioned, now with the legislative session, we are mandated to have a policy in place by March. And in in the past, it hasn't been that we [AUDIO OUT] we're using this as the opportunity and using the two options that were presented to us by the Elementary and Secondary Principals Association really, to just really refine this process for our school.

And we have in the past went down the road of attempting to have students put their cell phones in a specific spot in the classroom during class. And we just really found that it almost ends up being like a continual wish more than a cut and dry policy. And so really partnering with Yondr, we're looking at our-- they're basically a high-quality, I believe, nylon pouch with a magnetic lock that is a good tool to really help solidify our policy expectation across the board.

And we know that we can't accomplish a cell-phone-free environment just by words on a page, just [AUDIO OUT] a specific written policy. And so we're hoping that this tool really helps us be uniform in implementing this policy across the board and really, all have the same stance as a staff for the better of our students.

NINA MOINI: And just a follow up to that. How does it work logistically? Do they take the pouch home, or how does that work?

TAYLOR TOPINKA: So the pouch is theirs-- theirs for the year. We give out Chromebooks and Chromebook cases to our students and have done that for quite some time. We're going to ask students to treat the pouch very similarly. And we'll also tell the students that it's your pouch, and you'll most likely have this pouch for three, four years at a time while you're in school, so treat it well. They will be free to take it with them [AUDIO OUT] that they leave it in their locker just to make sure that it comes back successfully the next day. But it's theirs to take care of.

NINA MOINI: OK. And Matt, I'd love to bring you in. Your district's kind of taking the approach that you're going to have a designated area in each classroom where phones will be collected for high schoolers. Why not just say, hey, keep them in your backpack? What was your reasoning there?

MATT GROSE: Well, I think like Taylor mentioned, a policy is only as good as your ability to enforce it, and so whether that's putting them in pouches like is happening at USC or collecting those in classrooms, being really clear about what happens to the phones or what needs to happen to the phones, what the expectations for use or being put away are, and then what consequences might be for somebody who might not comply. So I think it will be interesting over the next couple of years to see how these policies evolve and districts adjust to what's working and not working.

And I think we'll see some variation from school district to school district and school to school as they figure out what works for them. And this is where we landed at this point with feedback from our teacher group that worked on the policy and administrator group that worked alongside them.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, and if it's not an obvious question, it says, your teachers were saying, please do something about this. Can you describe kind of why this impacts the whole classroom kind of ecosystem and why it's not just an individual, well, hey, if this student wants to look at their phone, why not? How does it impact sort of everybody in the environment?

MATT GROSE: Yeah, I think there are a couple things. And what's fascinating to see is the research that keeps coming in more and more about reported distractions, both from students and from teachers. But the first thing I think is just the distraction that happens both for the student that might be on their phone doing something that's not academic or tied to the learning that day, but also for the students that are around them that might be distracted by that person that's using that phone in a way that's not tied to the lesson. So there's that.

The other thing that I think can be easily missed is just the impact of phones on students' mental health and anxiety and bullying and things like that that happen. And it has certainly become a part of students' lives. But if you talk to principals in schools and talk to them about how many of the issues and student behavior issues that they deal with that have some sort of technology component, it's incredible. And access to information, access to say things without accountability, all those things factor in. And we're just excited to be able to have some really phone-free time, learning focused time, and looking forward to that for this year.

NINA MOINI: And it's not just high schoolers, right? I mean, both your districts are doing what's called away for the day for elementary and middle school students. Matt, do elementary school students have a lot of smart phones these days? Or what was the idea behind implementing this?

MATT GROSE: I don't think it'll be a big change at elementary schools, but I do think people would be shocked to know how many elementary kids have smart phones. I know of personally and see 8, 9-year-old kids that have $1,000 phone that they're carrying around. And whether that was because it was a hand-me-down or they got free as part of a deal, and I think a lot of parents are using them to either track their kid or give their kid something to do.

Not many of our elementary kids bring their phones to school. Parents know that it doesn't belong there, and it's at risk of getting broken and lost. So we don't see a lot of that anyway. It won't be a big change for our elementary schools. But for our middle school for sure, a lot of kids have phones, most. And their phones are going to be away in their lockers, locked up from the beginning bell to the end of the school day.

NINA MOINI: And Taylor, what do parents say about this? Are they worried it's too strict? Do you get a variety of voices there?

TAYLOR TOPINKA: This has been a metric that we've been considering here for the better part of the summer as we've rolled this plan out. And we're definitely taking our time with this and really doing our best to communicate the specifics of this, communicate the specifics of the procedure and really, the why behind this. And we have been prepared for some parent feedback and parent phone calls. And we've kind of been waiting for them to come, honestly. And so far, we've heard nothing but positive feedback.

Actually, just talking to our teachers as we go through workshops here this week, our teachers mentioned just at open house last night, they heard way more positives than negatives from our students even as we look to roll this out. So we haven't-- we haven't had major push back to it yet. We also have a neighboring school district to ours that has a very similar policy to us and has done this for quite some time. So it's not necessarily a new concept to our communities.

NINA MOINI: Sure. We've just a couple of minutes left. I do want to talk about enforcement because I wonder if there are concerns about what if a student is repeatedly not following this. How serious is it? I remember my first and only detention was in seventh grade for chewing gum. [LAUGHS] And I'm just curious, how serious do you get with enforcing a policy like this, Matt?

MATT GROSE: Well, that's where I think that partnership with parents comes in. And one of our-- one of the pieces to our policy is getting parents in to have a meeting if there's consistently violation of the policy. And dealing with student behavior isn't something that's new for our principals. They've been dealing with students that were not compliant with rules and policies for a long, long time, whether that is chewing gum in school or something else.

And so this is just another thing that we'll need to work with parents on. And we've had a similar experience as Taylor down in there at USC, where the feedback that we're getting is positive from our parents. I think they understand that there's a-- there's a concern, a legitimate concern, and their primary thing that they want to make sure is that they're able to get ahold of their child in an emergency. And we've worked through that before, and we'll continue to do that. But I'm confident in our ability of our principals to meet with parents, come up with a plan that works for a kid and deal with it that way.

NINA MOINI: And Matt, what do you hope comes out of this eventually for the student? Is it the hope that they'll feel less attached to their device?

MATT GROSE: Well, what's unique about schools is that we can control what happens during that bell to bell time. And then when they go home, we have no control over that. So I think the big thing is that students during school can focus on school. And if you read articles about where this has happened in other places-- and we're certainly not out on the cutting edge of this, I wouldn't say-- it's happened all over the country, but you hear more and more stories about kids admitting, maybe reluctantly, that they are engaging in more dialogue. They are talking to their neighbors and their friends more at school.

And besides the increased learning that we're sure is going to happen and focus that we're sure is going to happen, I think seeing kids talking to each other, seeing kids interacting with each other and the other positive adults in the building is something we're looking forward to.

NINA MOINI: Thank you both so much for your time. Best of luck with the new school year.

TAYLOR TOPINKA: Thank you, Nina.

MATT GROSE: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: Matt Grose is the superintendent of Grand Rapids Big Fork Public Schools in Northern Minnesota. And Taylor Topinka is the superintendent of United South Central Public Schools in Wells in Southern Minnesota.