Cellphone pouches are a bad idea

By Eve N. Bogdanove

Published: 08-11-2022 11:45 AM

Facebook is exploding about Superintendent Christine DeBarge’s decision to buy Yondr pouches to control student cellphone use.

Here’s what parents are saying: It criminalizes student behavior rather than responding to needs. It show a lack of real engagement with parents or real support for students The effort needed to implement Yondr pouches could instead be directed to help teachers and students address the issues behind phone use, the underlying problem of dissociation from participation in learning. And engage with parents to help solve the problem.

Yondr requires staff to handle a long line of students before school starts to get phones in pouches. Students will resent being herded and may try to get their phones out of the pouches (destroying the clips, or buying black-market unlocking magnets). The startup cost of $16,000 for Yondr does not include other costs, like staff time on implementation and monitoring, or parent payments for damaged pouches.

Facebook parents say DeBarge doesn’t want to hear opposition to her plans, citing her announcement posted Aug. 1 for a 20-minute in-person informational meeting on Monday Aug. 8. When no attended due to the short notice, they say, DeBarge can claim there is no opposition and move ahead with the plan. Every year, our more-resourced parents pull kids from public schools and more staff leave, including emotionally-present principals who demonstrably care about students and support teachers who are in the profession to make a difference.

Driving away valued staff, parents and students because they want dialogues not dictum only intensifies the already deep divisions by race and class in GPS, predictably leaving the most marginalized in harm’s way as usual.

GPS staff who still remain do so because they love this community, and they believe in the values and vision of public education. Despite their commitment to the students, they are only able to meet the immediate needs of the kids who stand before them each day. Students and teachers are being set up to fail by the inequitable systems that surround them — and each day their needs intensify.

But instead of helping them, GPS is pushing them out. Yondr will push them out. Greenfield might be in the poorest county in Massachusetts, but we are people-rich. We deserve better and we demand it.

Eve N. Bogdanove lives in Greenfield.

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