Hunter High’s possible phone policy change

Carlos Whitmer and Agustin Mariscal

At the start of every school year, you always go through the class and school policies. The rule that most teachers turn their attention to is the phone rule, where you can’t use your phones throughout the period until it ends, or the last ten minutes of that class. Every teacher differs when it comes to this policy though, some are very strict while others are lenient. This year, the administration has been discussing a change in this policy. 

The proposed change is that the phones would not be allowed at all during the entire school day. This is similar to the policy that is used over at America Preparatory Academy and Cyprus High. This policy has both its benefits and its downsides, some benefits are that it teachers retain more of their classes attention when students are not distracted by their phones. Not having phones will also lessen the cheating here, and maybe even stop some cyber bullying that maybe happening in this big school. One downside though is that students will dislike this policy and that it takes some heavy enforcement at first to try to change something that big. This policy will also break the hearts of the students that like to spend their entire class period on their phone.

While this policy offers benefits to the school, many disagree that this is not the right thing for Hunter High. Downsides that this policy has is that if there is an emergency then parents do not have the quick convenience of contacting their kids. Students also have less communication to their fellow classmates and this can make it difficult for some students who ask their friends for help, especially when they are new to the school.