Flandreau school board members held further discussion about their electronic communication device policy at the board meeting last Monday.

The current policy states that students cannot use their personal electronic devices during the school day in classrooms, hallways or other academic settings. These devices include anything not provided by the school: cell phones, iPods, mp3 players.

But cell phones can be used in the lunchroom or gymnasium, designated phone zones, before school and during lunch hour. However, they must be put away, turned off and out of sight at all other things, including passing period between classes.

The main discussion at the previous school board meeting centered around whether to change anything within the policy to match how it’s enforced or whether it’s an enforcement issue of the teaching staff.

Last Monday, school board president Darren Hamilton said, as he recalled, the primary reason for allowing students access to cellphones in school was in the case of an intruder, which would be to the school’s benefit.

“I don’t think that’s how they’re being managed these days,” Hamilton said. “We have probably 12-20 variations depending on the classroom and potentially on the mood of the individual trying to enforce. I don’t see a lot of positive excuses of why we need cell phones in the classrooms.”

He said in his mind it’s the school board’s job to set the policy and hand it over to Superintendent Rick Weber and the administration to see that it’s enforced.

Weber said some teachers are more okay, for example, with students using their phones for a calculator, in math class, or for music, during study halls, than others.

Part of the concern stems from a previous incident where a student took a picture of a test on their phone and sent the photo to others.

Elizabeth Beall, who teaches biology and anatomy, said as a science teacher she will let her students use the timer on their cell phones during certain projects as a way to incorporate certain life skills beneficial to students.

Technology coordinator Brendan Streitz said some teachers have also allowed their students use cell phones for class projects, taking photos and videos to download onto their school laptops.

In the past, students would to go the library to check out a camera during the day for this purpose, but Streitz said he doesn’t think the school has bought new cameras for a long time.

In situations like Beall’s, board member Clay Pavlis suggested having a waiver for the teacher to fill out that goes through either the school board or principal stating the class will use phones for whatever period of time the project or projects lasts.

Though students are not supposed to go to the locker rooms during lunch hour, it seems to be common knowledge that they do, which leads to another concern that if students are using the phones in the locker rooms and bathrooms, what other inappropriate photos might be taken.

“It would be very devastating it something bad did happen to a young kid,” board member Tom Stenger said. “I hate thinking they have them in the locker room and the bathrooms.”

Board member Kari Burggraff said she thinks the board has a responsibility to put signs up in the locker room areas enforcing that cell phones are not allowed.

While none of the above concerns have happened recently, board members worry that in the long run students will be affected, whether it’s a safety or privacy issue, an educational issue or even being consistently late to class in the morning because of looking at something on their cell phone.

Middle school principal Brian Relf said he has seen the latter happen and that it’s impacting the learning.

Overall, the main issue is the consistency of the policy enforcement by the teachers in the high school.

“I think we need to watch that it’s being enforced by our teachers too,” Stenger said. “The teacher shouldn’t be in the front of the room using [a phone] if the kids can’t. Because that will affect them.”

Awaiting any further comments from staff, students or parents and for the results of a survey, the school board will continue the discussion at their April meeting. If the board decides to make changes to the policy, they will do so and make sure the policy is enforced by the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year in the fall.