Flagler Students Violated Limited Cell Phone Ban 1,300 Times This Year; Principals Caution Against Total Ban

Students at all levels in Flagler County’s nine district schools violated the ban on using cell phones during class over 1,300 times so far this year, but less than a fifth of that number were repeat offenders, and violations appear to be declining as students get used to the new, stricter policy. The violations are for the most part in high school, according to a report prepared by John Fanelli, the district’s coordinator of student support and behavior.

But there’s no recommendation from the administration to go further than the current ban, which still allows students to use their phones between classes and at lunch. If anything, Flagler’s middle and high school principals are cautioning the school board against imposing a stricter ban, finding the current balance effective and educational.




Orange County schools, for example, have banned any phone use at any point during the school day, with severe consequences for violators. Deans are not seeing the need for students to turn in their phones or to create cell-phone lockers.

“In 80 percent of the cases it’s a one-and-done,” Fanelli said of violations in Flagler’s nine schools, while teachers are managing well with enforcement, especially since they’re not the ones primarily responsible for that enforcement. Superintendent LaShakia Moore isn’t interested in further burdening teachers in policing: “We want our teachers to come in and just be able to remind our students what the expectations are,” Moore said. “If the students aren’t going to follow those expectations, that’s why we have other people in different roles to do their job to be able to provide those interventions.”

Out of the 1,305 violations, 167 of them were second-time violators, 59 violated three times, and 44 violated four or more times. Only three violations occurred in total in elementary schools (where students don’t have cell phone access all day), and 227 in middle schools. The rest were at the two high school. “So we’re really talking about 100 kids right now that we’re working through stricter consequences on not utilizing their devices during instructional time,” Fanelli said.




A state law (HB379, which passed the House and Senate unanimously) went in effect on July 1, forbidding students to use their phone during instructional time. The law also forbids students from using the district’s Wi-Fi during the day, at least on their personal devices. The school board followed suit, amending district policy to reflect the ban. “Basically, we look at instructional time from bell to bell when students should be in their seats, learning, focused on the quality education provided by the teacher in the room,” Fanelli said.

In other words students are free to keep their devices, but they may only use them between classes, at lunch, or on the bus. On the bus they’re required to use the devices in personal mode–with earphones only, or without sound. Violations lead to confiscation, repeat violation to more serious consequences.

A legislative analysis provided lawmakers during debate over the new law found that on average tweens 8 to 12 years old use five and a half hours of screen media per day, while teens 13 to 18 use eight and a half hours, with YouTube and other forms of video content, including streamed television shows, at the top of the list, followed by gaming, then social media and browsing websites.

Lawmakers were concerned about the increase in cyberbullying and devices’ impact on mental health, with the suicide rate for children 10 to 14 doubling from 2007 to 2014, paralleling the rise in social media. While the numbers are not in dispute–and have been used, or exploited, by politicians, educators and analysts–the causal link is still debated even as increasing evidence leans toward such a link. In schools, officials are especially concerned about students’ focus on instruction.




A first violation in Flagler schools triggers a parent contact, a conference with the student and a warning, solving 80 percent of the issues. The second violation is in-school detention. A third offense is parent contact, detention in school and suspension from all sorts of privileges in school, which entails lunch detention and afterschool activities.

A fourth offense crosses a line: “Now you’re you’re being oppositional, you’re being defiant and you are not accessing your education at your fullest potential because you keep looking at your phone or your device,” Fanelli said. That leads first to in-school suspension and Saturday detention, and if yet another violation follows, an out-of-school suspension is next. (Board member Sally Hunt said she was not fan of out-of-school suspensions, and pressed for all possible actions before it reaches that point.)

Students are placed on “behavior contracts” that give them a clear idea of what they’re in for if they keep violating. There are also cases where the student will be required to turn in a phone to the dean at the beginning of the school day. That’s a bit of an end-run around the law, which protects students’ right to bring their phone to school. “They do have a right under law to bring it to school,” Fanelli said. “We can ask for them to turn it in when they get to the school and then we will provide the right device back to them when they transition back home.” The district doesn;t want to get in the habit of doing that. But it wants that power to use if it so chooses.




The district is not limiting its authority to in-school use of cell phones. Going beyond the law–as it is in every local district’s authority to do–it is preparing a document that will go to parents, guiding them on installing control and spyware on their children’s devices, teaching parents “how they can help support us in holding that instructional time sacred and making sure that students are getting the best out of that information that’s being provided to them,” Fanelli said.

School Board member Christy Chong, who is frequently disdainful of the press, quoted a headline to her colleagues on the board to get their feedback: “Florida school district is transformed after banning students from using phones for entire day DAY: Bullying drops, student engagement in class rises – and kids saying they’re enjoying face-to-face interaction.”

What Chong didn’t tell her colleagues is that the headline is from the Daily Mail, an online British scandal sheet that sensationalizes information and sources it poorly, if at all: there was no evidence for its claim about bullying or documentation of student engagement, other than the odd anecdote.

In fact, the only source of information the Daily Mail refers to–the article that enabled the Daily Mail to rewrite and distort it in its own style–is a much more nuanced New York Times article published earlier that day. It cites a single administrator in one school claiming, in general terms and without evidence, that phone-related bullying dropped after the ban. And it found the Orange County ban decidedly far less appealing to students than the Daily mail made it out to be.




“The ban has made the atmosphere at Timber Creek both more pastoral and more carceral,” the Times article report, and it quotes students who concede that the ban has “made interacting with their classmates more authentic.” But students also feel less safe for not being allowed to carry the phone all day. “Other students said school seemed more prisonlike. To call their parents, they noted, students must now go to the front office and ask permission to use the phone. Surveillance has also intensified,” the article reported.

One officers patrols on a golf cart and nabs violating students while students are spied on with surveillance cameras. “Orange County students described the ban as regressive, noting that they could no longer use their phones to check their class schedules during school, take photos of their projects in art class, find their friends at lunch — or even add the phone numbers of new classmates to their contact lists,” the paper reported.

Chong, like certain other members of the Flagler school board, often incorporate cherry-picked and unvetted information either to make a point or discuss policies. After reading the Daily Mail headline, she asked Fanelli and the middle and high school principals arrayed before her: “Is that something that makes life easier or harder? Like, how do you all feel about that? You know, or do you feel like the phones cause more fights? That sort of thing.”

Principal in turn said there’s a “decrease in a lot of behaviors,” with more student engagement, more classroom engagement, with overwhelming compliance and allowances for them to use the phones between classes and at lunch. The law “really has made a huge, a huge impact. Our teachers feel more empowered to be able to address it,” another principal said.




But after seemingly placating Chong just enough, principals–like Fanelli, who had reported similar thoughts from deans–were decidedly not in favor of putting on further screws, as in Orange County, even after Will Furry, the board member who usually mirrors Chong or vice versa, again asked if the existing rules were enough.

The idea is to give students an opportunity to learn proper cell phone use as they become adults, Matanzas High School Principal Kristin Bozeman said. “I’m not seeing that students have just turned into phone moles during social time,” she said. “Students are still in the hallways, they’re interacting with their friends in person. They’re at lunch, they’re talking and having conversations. I think there’s some concern or I’ve heard–Oh, are they just on their phones at lunchtime instead of talking to their friends, and I personally have not observed that at Matanzas. Yes, they are checking their texts. For most students that are starting to understand and conform with the expectation, it helps that they know it’s not going to be taken from them the whole day.”

Bozeman noted that there are students who have important things going on in their families–a grandmother in the hospital or different family situations that warrant a check-in. “So you do allow them to have that flexibility to be able to access the information that they do want. But you’re setting a limit on it.”

“I’ve said all along, we really should be focused on how to create digitally responsible people,” Board member Colleen Conklin said, “so that they are aware of what’s appropriate and not appropriate.”

What was not asked or discussed was whether the ban on phone use is having an effect on academic performance.

“I have a teen in high school, and I have my cell phone, and I have control of her phone,” Board member Cheryl Massaro said. “It has been an education to say the least, to find the right apps, make sure I know what I’m doing, to make sure it’s installed in-house. She doesn’t like it, but she understands it. And I think that education of the parents is crucial because we’re in that timeframe: they didn’t have to worry about it when we were in school. Now it’s an issue. It’s new, and our parents have to kind of get with the program and offering the opportunity to teach parents–use this app–would be very helpful, absolutely. I think that’s great.”