Cell phones and text messaging

We have been having an ever increasing amount of student use of cell phones during school hours. NCCS has a policy that prohibits students from using cell phones during school hours because of the distracting qualities inherent in their use. Added to this is the increase use of negative communication that takes place between students, at times referred to as cyber-bullying. We are seeing increased activity in this area and it is becoming increasingly more difficult to fulfill our responsibility of maintaining students’ safety while this happens so quickly and easily out of sight of a school employee. Quite often when we take phones away we hear that students want them returned or are in immediate need of their phone in order to keep in touch with parents using the text message component. While we recognize that there are times when parents and students need to communicate with each other during the day, we ask for your help in keeping these to times of actual emergency. When we take phones away and hear that we are depriving students of their need to communicate with parents, we let them know that they are free to use the school phones for this purpose at a time when it is not disruptive to the educational process. We need to be able to curtail cell phone use during school hours as it is our responsibility to maintain a safe and undisrupted educational setting. Please help us by refraining from text messaging your child during school hours and letting them know that they should follow school procedures to contact parents during the day.