The all new administrative team brought something else new with them: a rule restricting students from using their phones during the school day, besides lunch. This new rule helps cut down on distractions from a students’ school work, but it coddles teens, by taking away their responsibility to self regulate phone usage.

The school needs to change the rule to allow students more freedom with their phones.

Freshmen through seniors all disagree with the new rule, but the real problem lies with the juniors and seniors. The students in these grades make up the majority of the school’s drivers. The administration trusts teens enough to drive a car, a dangerous and potentially fatal task, but not enough to regulate their own screen time and phone usage. If these teens drive to and from school everyday, then the administration needs to trust them with something as simple as their phones. 

The staff argues the school provided Macbooks eliminates the need for phones, but phones give students a chance to explore different learning avenues. Each student learns differently, so the school supplied resources work well for some, but not all. By using their phones, more resources become readily available than what the laptop allows.

Not only does it expand their options, it lets them learn time management skills that work for them. As seniors prepare to start a new chapter of their lives, they need to know how to manage their time. Although admittedly not important to some, time management remains an extremely important life skill that if not learned early on, holds the potential to cause problems in the future. Completing work in a timely manner remains key in the professional world, no matter the distractions. If students learn to manage their time while in school, it makes the transition to adulthood easier. 

The debate of phones in classrooms began years ago, and continues to this day. Even though the necessity of phones in classrooms changes everyday, they serve as a way to teach responsibility and productivity.