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Missouri's new personal electronics policy took effect this school year. Governor Mike Kehoe signed a law that banned cell phones and other communication devices in schools, barring emergencies and exceptions.
But some students feel this is limiting their ability to succeed in school.
Independence School District speech and debate students brought their arguments to Tuesday night's school board meeting.
The students called on district administration to reconsider its implementation of the electronic policy. They told the school board that with their current course work load, the laptops provided by the school aren't able to keep up.
Jacob Gragg and Levi Smith spend hours preparing for their debate competitions and advanced placement college classes. They rely on documents that are sometimes 1,000 pages and databases that the Chromebooks provided by don't have.
"Our Chromebooks, which have four gigabytes of RAM, can barely open eight tabs on a Google window and will completely shut down," Gragg said.
That's why they've used their own computers for the last three years; without problems and with permission from their teachers.
"I was in constant communication with my teachers," Smith said. "It wasn't like I was just pulling up and watching Netflix."
Senate Bill 68 bans the use of personal electronics in schools, but leaves it up to the school for educational exceptions.
"It's been a huge difference between the way that our school is thinking about this," Gragg said. "Our teachers don't have the power to tell you when you can and can't use them anymore."
Smith explained his friends in other districts don't have the same problem he does.
"Every kid I've talked to from Raytown to Liberty has no correlation to this problem at all," Smith said. "They say 'wow that's crazy I can't believe they won't let you use your MacBook. I can."'
The high school seniors compared the software efficiency on both their personal MacBooks and school Chromebooks. It took several minutes for the same document to load on the Chromebook.
"Something that would take three seconds on my MacBook would take eight minutes plus [on my Chromebook] and that's pretty much all the time you have in a [debate] round because it's fast paced," Smith said. "I'm constantly hitting roadblocks in my college classes. Students will spend their entire class time loading these documents, but it's not a realistic way to go about school."
Every time they've told school administrators, the students explained the district's solutions gives them more problems.
"I feel like I've been half heard, but not listened to," Gragg said.
That changed on Tuesday night as the school board listened to speech students present their arguments for why personal laptops should be allowed in school.
"Well done William Chrisman [high school] debate program because we have trained our students really well," Board of Education Director Wendy Baird said. "It's exciting to see them use that in real world experience."
The district superintendent declined to speak on camera at the meeting.
"The district’s intent is not to hinder students but to protect learning opportunities while ensuring equitable, secure access for all students and remaining compliant with state and federal regulations," Independence School District said in a statement. "Allowing unmonitored personal devices on the district network presents significant cybersecurity risks, including malware, ransomware, and illegal downloads that could compromise the entire ISD system... Our staff will continue to actively troubleshoot any issues and collaborate with students and families to ensure that academic progress is not interrupted."
"If debate has taught me one thing, it's to use my voice to advocate," Gragg said.
School leadership stated at Tuesday night's meeting they would consider looking at the policy language and considering solutions for students.
