For years, teachers individually have wrestled with how much to control use of mobile devices in their classrooms.
Now, over the last two years particularly, school district officials, and more recently also state legislators in Nebraska and Iowa, are discussing broader policies that could separately govern each school or perhaps all schools in a state, in terms of use of cell phones during school hours.
With a few weeks to go in the sessions, major decisions in both those legislatures seem to be imminent. So for this episode of What’s The Frequency, we check in on Siouxland students and school leaders to see what has been done to dwindle cell phone usage and how much more change regarding that might be ahead.
Among the school districts in the tri-state area that put in new restrictions for students on mobile devices were River Valley of Correctionville, Sheldon, and St. Edmond Catholic School in Fort Dodge, in Iowa.
St. Edmond Principal Maurice Ruble said he sees the phones as an addiction for many people, especially for today’s K-12 students, who cannot recall a life without them.
Ruble cited research, surveys and also information in the 2024 bestseller “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.”
Ruble harkened back to the advent of the most basic cell phones with very limited texting in about 2000. Once cell phones became more like “little computers” with internet, apps, and social media, he said, things deteriorated.
In Nebraska, Winnebago Public Schools and the South Sioux City School District have updated restrictions on phone use by pupils during the school day.
According to a summary by Winnebago school officials, by September the teachers were describing the Electronic Device ban as an absolute success. There were definitely significant growing pains and a number of students have had to experience In-School-Suspension in the initial weeks. But the classroom results became overwhelmingly positive, and the suspensions dropped off.
Lisa Janvrin, a parent in the Elkhorn Public Schools system, said she wants to help her son learn boundaries with technology.
“It's kind of comparing if we were in the '90s growing up,” Janvrin said. “If we took our TV, all of our magazines, our MTV, and we put it on our desk and sat there and tried to listen to a teacher, that would be extremely distracting, right? It's the same thing with the cell phones.”
Two principals share what has happened with new restrictions in the 2024-25 year, including how students and parents have responded. Those include Nick Miller, the Sheldon High School principal in Sheldon, Iowa, and David Clausen, the South Sioux City High School principal.
Other voices in the episode include young people discussing their own mobile phone usage, and what they think about the push to lessen mobile devices in school.
Those guests are Addie Law, a senior at River Valley High School in Correctionville, Iowa, plus Hala Abdalla of Sioux City, Melfeena Kitilach, of Sioux City, and Jesse Rodriguez, of Le Mars.
*Click on the audio link above to hear the entire show.
What's The Frequency, Episode 59.
