Lansing high school pupils adjusting to new cell phone policy

Smartphones were hardly Lansing Eastern High School Principal Marcelle Carruthers' radar when he began his education career as a teacher and coach at Everett High at the turn of the century. Back then, the state still had a law on the books that banned pagers in schools.

Carruthers was named Eastern’s principal in 2017. Having grown weary of cell phones in the classroom, he helped administer a spring-semester pilot program banning cell phone for eighth and ninth graders.

That was successful enough to lead him and Lansing’s other high school principals to approach Mitch Foster, the district’s senior director of high schools, in June to see if they could implement the policy in all four buildings.

“It was disrupting the classroom learning process,” Carruthers explained. “We decided to take the opportunity now to do what we could to eliminate that, because we knew it would be better for our students and make it easier for our staff to do their jobs.”

Foster was all in.

“Everything supports this kind of procedure,” Foster said. “The primary purpose of school is teaching and learning, and everything we’ve seen about this procedure and policy supports optimizing that kind of environment during the school day.”

Lansing Easter High School Principal Marcelle Carruthers.

As of this fall, at the start of each class period, teachers collect phones to store in a secure lockbox until the end of the hour.

It’s part of a national movement that studies have shown to be both effective and well-received by educators who are concerned about the impact cell phones and social media have had on their students’ mental health.

According to a March 2024 survey of 2,889 members of the National Education Association, 90% of respondents supported schools banning cell phone use. Similarly, a 2023 Pew Research study found that 72 percent of high school teachers considered cell phones a “major problem” in the classroom.

Indeed, in another study from Central Michigan University, researchers echoed existing studies in finding that “addictive” smartphone use led to “reduced academic performance among adolescents.”

Other Michigan districts that already have some sort of cell phone ban in place include Detroit Public Schools, Utica Community Schools, Dearborn City Schools, Plymouth-Canton Schools, Forest Hill Public Schools in Grand Rapids, Atherton Schools in Burton, Westwood Schools in Dearborn Heights, Hazel Park Schools, Tomlinson Middle School in Inkster, Northville Public Schools and Mackinaw City High School.

In the Pew Research study, 82% of respondents said they already had some form of cell phone restrictions in place at their schools. Of that group, 30% noted that they had some difficulty enforcing those rules.

East Lansing’s policy stops short of collecting all phones.

East Lansing High School Principal Ashley Schwarzbek and her staff rolled out a new cell phone policy in fall 2022. Teachers confiscate cell phones and other non-academic electronic devices when students use them during instructional periods.

East Lansing High School Principal Ashley Schwarzbek.

 “We came to a critical point where we had situations involving student-peer conflicts and other disruptions, so we made some changes,” Schwarzbek said. “One of them was to limit cell phone use.”

The policy, now in its third year, has worked well for her staff.

“The biggest feedback we’ve gotten from teachers is that they’ve seen an increase in instructional time because they’re not having to take time to redirect students that are on phones,” she said.

Three weeks into the fall semester in Lansing, Carruthers said he’s seen just “a couple issues with a few students who may not have wanted to give their phone up to a teacher.” When that happens, the instructor brings that student’s phone to the office, where it remains for the rest of the day.

In both East Lansing and Lansing high schools, students are still permitted to use their phones during passing periods and lunch hours. Carruthers, who cited social media use as a key driver behind the new policy, dubbed this “a big compromise.”

“Some of our students are now doing TikTok videos during lunchtime after they get their phones back,” Carruthers said. “We thought that was an important trade off to help them buy into this, and I think students are largely accepting it.”

Schwarzbek also stressed the benefits of retaining the students’ right to use their phones at those times.

“We recognize that our students are young adults who have some legitimate uses. They may have to check their work schedule or pick up their younger sibling that afternoon. We understood that there’s always going to be some need for them to be able to have their phone at specific times, but instructional time just wasn’t one of them,” Schwarzbek said.

She said Lansing educators should expect some resistance early on, adding that it will “even out” as students settle into a routine.

“We’ll see a higher number of phones coming in at the beginning of the year, because students are still getting used to that system. I think we fought some ebb and flow, because any policy is always only as good as its enforcement,” Schwarzbek said. “That’s been a learning curve for all of our staff, as well as making sure we’re consistently enforcing it across all classrooms, all the time.”

As far as backlash from parents or students is concerned, Schwarzbek said most complaints boil down to concerns about safety during emergencies. It’s part of the reason, unlike the Lansing School District, her school opted to not actually collect phones.

“We don’t take their phone unless we absolutely have to, because we wanted to make sure that our students still feel confident that they can continue to have it on their person all day, as long as they’re using it at the appropriate times,” Schwarzbek said.

There are also special cases, like diabetic students who need access to their tracking applications.

“If there’s a medical issue, we always automatically approve that request. There are also some extenuating circumstances where there may be a family member in the hospital and a parent needs to be able to contact their child about it,” Carruthers said.

Aside from these allowances, Carruthers and Schwarzbek believe their policies will, in time, become the new norm.

“Our K-8 students are already not allowed to use their phones at all. So, our current freshmen that were at our middle school last year are already largely used to this,” Schwarzbek said. “To many of them, the little bit of freedom that we do give our high school students to make certain decisions as young adults may feel like a loosening up of things, to some degree.”

— TYLER SCHNEIDER