Searcy (LP) Searcy High School has a strongly enforced cell phone policy where students are not allowed to use their phones at any time on the school grounds and if they are caught with their phone out, it will be taken and given back a few days later to their parents. If a student has two or three offenses, they can even get detention or Saturday school.

Many students and even their parents feel that this policy at Searcy High School needs to change because they feel that phones can be useful in lessons and sometimes parents need to get ahold of their children during school to set up appointments or to see when and where they need picked up at. Jericho Scott, a student at Searcy High School says, “I think that if students could use their cell phones during lunch and in the halls, it could cut down a lot on cell phone use in the classroom.” Other students feel that Searcy High School needs to have a cell phone policy similar to what they have now, but that it needs to be a little bit more lenient or maybe each individual teacher should be able to choose a cell phone policy for their class. According to Mrs. Trisha White, the problem with this is that, “Students would feel like they have the right to have their phone out in any classroom just because one teacher lets them.”

Another issue with allowing students to have their phones out at school for educational purposes is that it would be extremely difficult to make sure that they were only doing their lessons, and not texting or checking facebook, even though this is probably inevitable with or without a cell phone policy. Most teachers believe that Searcy High School should have the strict cell phone policy that they have because phones could be a distraction to students, but Mrs. White’s number one concern is that, “Students only get to experience High School one time and if they spend it with their heads in their phones, they will miss out on lots of things and regret it.” Other schools have tried different cell phone policies with vastly differing effects. For instance, at ASU, students are required to put their phone face down on their desk during tests to prevent cheating, and during lessons and school work they are allowed to use their phones for assistance and it is a pretty good method according to Bestynna Okai and Jericho.

Mrs. White says, “Other schools have started allowing students to use cell phones in class for educational purposes and the results so far have been distracted students and even more distracted teachers trying to find some kind of middle ground with the students.” It is likely that sometime in the near future there will be some changes to the Searcy High School cell phone policy, though it is not known how significant the changes will be.