KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
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Blue Springs School District Superintendent Dr. Bob Jerome was a little shocked by the answer his daughters gave Tuesday about how their first day of high school went.
“It went great,” his oldest daughter, a junior, said. “It felt different this year.”
“Why did it feel different?” Jerome asked.
“Everyone was just a lot more connected and engaged,” his daughter said.
The reason — no cell phones. A new Missouri law requires students to stash personal communication devices during school hours.
“It has a real opportunity to make the learning environment better, to create more engagement and connection with kids and staff,” Jerome said during the Independence Chamber of Commerce’s annual State of the Schools Luncheon on Wednesday. “It's a tough change for some, but I'm excited about what that opportunity might be.”
Blue Springs has always banned cell-phone use in its elementary and middle schools, but personal communication devices, including smartwatches and other devices used to send and receive calls and texts, have been allowed when class wasn’t in session.
Under Senate Bill 68, students are prohibited from using or displaying personal communication devices from the first bell until the last each school day.
“We're off to an excellent start at Fort Osage,” Dr. Jason Snodgrass said. “I was in the building yesterday, and kids were having active conversations during lunch. I believe, in the classroom, we're just doing a good job engaging with the teacher.”
Interim Independence Superintendent Cindy Grant isn’t surprised. Her district instituted a ban on personal communication devices, except at lunch, in 2019.
“We actually took that back to our classrooms and had them do a project,” she said. “Every time they had a disruption — whether it was on a smartphone, their phone, or a smart watch, something like that — they put a tick on a piece of chart paper. The realization was how many times their day was interrupted, their class was interrupted, and their focus was taken away.”
District leaders engaged with students on a solution.
“We took it to students and said, ‘OK, what do we do?’ So it was a partnership,” Grant said of how the ban came to be six years ago.
Early returns from other districts are encouraging.
“We've heard a lot of positive comments so far,” Snodgrass said. “Again, we're only one day in. We don't know what we don't know yet, but we're very optimistic that this will have a positive impact on student engagement and student learning.”
Jerome, Snodgrass and Grant all said feedback from students and parents has been overwhelmingly positive, and their staffs also support the change.
Raytown School District Superintendent Dr. Penelope Martin-Knox also spoke to business leaders during the luncheon.
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