Conroe ISD Cell Phone Committee Meeting 2
Survey results, group roundtables, smart watches, and focus on K-6
*These are my personal notes and thoughts, which do not represent the district or committee as a whole, nor do they reflect what the cell phone policy may or may not become.
This is part 2 of an ongoing set of committee meetings regarding cell phones in CISD schools. If you are not up to date, start with this post first.
All presentation content shared in this post can be found on the CISD website here.
Summary
At the second meeting of the committee, we did a number of things:
Reviewed the parent survey results
Had roundtable discussions on our homework from the first meeting, which was to collect feedback from the community
Received presentation on Technology TEKS
Had Q&A with several principals from K-6 schools
Took mini survey from committee
Attendance for meeting was still high but due to Grand Oaks parade we were missing some
Parent Survey
The parent survey had nearly 8,500 responses. Here were the highlights:
There were thousands of comments to sort through. Here were the highlights presented by admin:
I do believe we still need a wordle or word counter to sort through 2,500 comments to get the highlights, which I asked for (will update if received).
Survey Thoughts
As someone who works with data on a daily basis, my only complaint about this survey is that it is not user validated, so I have to assume that these were all completed by parents and not a coordinated effort of teenagers furiously filling out surveys on…their cell phones. Either way, it still shows a majority have concerns on cell phone use in schools.
Homework Feedback
If you remember from last meeting, the committee was tasked with getting feedback from the community, which we received A TON of via the various Facebook groups. I received several comments from my last post in the parent groups, as well via private message from teachers, substitutes, and more.
As we arrived to the meeting, we were randomly grouped together at new tables, which included parents, admin, and teachers. We did not sit with the same people we had last time.
Our first task was to summarize the community feedback to paper, which you can see copies of on the site in the first presentation. The feedback was split by the different grade levels. Here are some examples, and yes I know the picture resolutions are not great (I didn’t take these):
There were about six groups, and once we were done with our paper, we each went clockwise to the next group’s paper and reviewed their feedback. We then added stars to what we found aligned with our original paper. Finally, the groups spoke to the entire committee about our findings from the exercise. Here are the overall summaries:
Overall, I’d say the committee, and community through its feedback, recognize the common issues and challenges with cell phones. There were A LOT of questions about smart watches, which we’ll expand upon in a moment. Other than the summaries above, the committee does recognize some key points:
One size fits all does not work across grade levels, so policy should be specific per K-6, 7-8, 9-12. Note that CISD has five campuses that are K-6, hence why it is not broken down by K-4 and 5-6.
New guidelines should limit impact to how cell phones are enforced, as in how do you write the guidelines to not add more work to teachers and admin (e.g., monitoring at lunch or hallways can be difficult to manage).
Kids and parents need more education on proper use of mobile devices, which expands into proper social media use, and the repercussions of poor decision making with the internet.
The district is not one-to-one for devices, which is a contributor to the issue of cell phone use for certain classroom activities.
Technology Application TEKS
Dr. Lambert, CISD Director of Information Systems, and Mindy Harding, Coordinator for Instructional Technology, gave a great presentation on the Technology Application TEKS (see here), which provide the curriculum requirements from the state of Texas.
They also discussed research on screen time and its impacts, but more importantly they provided info on the impact of restricting cell phone use as it relates to instruction:
This list personally opened my eyes to use of cell phones in the classroom with things I did not think about previously, such as anonymous reporting for school safety, daily reminders for medications, and several other areas that may not be covered under a 504 or IEP. Many parents voiced these same concerns as well via our online discussions.
K-6 Principal Round Table
There were five principals from schools within K-6 that answered both curated questions and questions from the committee. Here are the notes I collected:
Phones not a major issue in K-6, however kids do need to begin education early on proper use of devices.
Cellular smart watches are becoming more popular as they provide basic communication needs and location tracking. However, they can still cause disruptions through noise and distraction. These can interrupt the learning environment.
What is your ideal scenario with smart watches?
“Not to have to police it.”
“What defines a smart watch?” All different kinds, difficult for teachers to know all the different models for putting into Airplane Mode. Teachers having to tech support.
Guidelines should be broad enough to include the technology itself for all smart watches.
Instances where student communicates to parent first rather than teacher, then parent calls school angry at teacher for not assisting with illness or other issue. Need students to understand communication with teachers is important.
Isolated incidents where something occurs outside the school (e.g., home life, fighting) and bring it into the school (e.g. video of)
Examples of incidents that have occurred (K-6):
Texting each other to meetup in bathrooms
Videos created in bathrooms or hallways
In K-6, how often do teachers ask to use phones for instructional use?
“Never.”
Have you seen any issues with implementation of cell phone guidelines?
Can have backlash from parents without proper communication.
Consistency with monitoring, staying the course across the entire school with the guidelines is vital.
Air tags and similar tech are not a major issue and are quite common.
How is tech education added into K-6 today?
TEKS, and counselors education on cyberbullying frequently.
What about teachers, do they need to follow new guidelines for cell phone use?
Generally no policy for teachers as they utilize apps for class such as reminders (e.g. take attendance), timers, and other education related apps. But still expectation of proper use.
Question about liability of devices being damaged or stolen:
Student handbook specifically states that the school district is not liable for damaged or stolen phones. However, the school does investigate these incidents.
Committee Survey
The committee completed a mini survey at the end of the meeting to get further feedback on guideline definitions. It asked about including smart watches in the guidelines, defining before and after school, and asking what “visible” means as it relates to putting away a cell phone. To summarize, the committee majority voted the following:
Smart watches should be included in the guidelines.
Defining “before and after” school should be managed by local campus foundations staff.
Defining “not visible” for cell phones means within backpacks, although that question had multi-selection so there was also support for in locker or to be defined by the local campus foundations staff.
Closing Out
Overall, this was a very productive meeting. We learned a lot, heard perspectives from people who deal with these issues directly, and had good discussions on the topic.
One interesting note I learned at our group table is that all CISD 9-12 campuses apparently have similar cell phone guidelines already, which restricts their use. The inconsistency seems to be in the 7-8 campuses. It would be nice to line up all existing policies side by side.
Special shoutout to Dr. Medford, who absolutely delivers and engages with the committee, answering every question, and being open to the debate.
Next Up
A teacher survey is underway. We will review their answers at next meeting.
A second parent survey is in development, to be sent out soon.
The next meetings will focus on grades 7-8 and then 9-12, so more to come for those.
Committee has homework to review research from articles provided and to search for our own research. This includes researching from other school districts, and reviewing what implementation of new guidelines would look like.
For those reading this, please provide more feedback based on what you have read today, what you know from other school districts, and any research you may have that is relevant.
Thank you for reading!