Here at Holy Family High School, we have implemented a new, stricter phone policy. Phones are not allowed from arrival to dismissal. If your phone is seen or heard, it will be confiscated by your teacher and given to the dean. At the end of the day, you will need to go and pick it up from their office. After three confiscations, you will receive a detention. After six confiscations, it is a Saturday detention, and after nine confiscations, you will get suspended.
After talking with Mrs. Helbig, Dean of Students, she said that “this year is going to be a test year for our phone policy. At the end of this year, we will reevaluate and decide whether to be more strict or less strict with our phone policy.”
With the phone ban being discussed in state legislatures across the country, we, as a private school, had to react first. They concluded that with a new state law, possibly to be enacted in the next year, we had to respond first as a private school.
Students here at Holy Family are not advocates for the new phone policy from arrival to dismissal. Many students we talked to said that “they want to be able to have their phones out in the hallways and during lunch.” Another student said that “The phone jail at least allowed you to check notifications for a glance when you went to grab your phone.”
We conversed with a Holy Family Alum and parent who thinks that “we as a society are becoming the people in WALL-E.” She continued to say that she “supports it fully because you guys are connecting as a community instead of only connecting through a phone.”
We talked with a teacher who had already had her own classroom policy, and she said how “I love it, but I don’t see much of a difference in my classroom.” However, she did say that she noticed that she doesn’t really have to remind people about phones because they already have them put away. She also likes how “the lunch room is louder, which is great.”
Overall, it is concluded that the admin and teachers all agree with the phone policy and the positive effect it is having on the school. Students are against the phone policy and its implications all day. We will see throughout the year how the phone policy affects the school as a whole.
