NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Kansas State Board of Education is due to vote this week on restrictions on personal device usage in Kansas K-12 schools, based on recommendations from a statewide screen time task force.
"They are really suggesting that boards should, local school boards, should adopt policies on their own that would essentially say at all levels from kindergarten through high school, students are not even to have phones or other type devices like smart watches, those things, even on their person during the school day," said Mark Tallman with the Kansas Association of School Boards. "Basically, you would come to school, the devices would be secured, there are several ways you could do this to create an environment where kids do not have that personal device distraction at any time. Other approaches have talked about trying to more strictly limit it, say during class periods, but allow kids to do it lunchrooms or in the hallway. It would be a pretty strict policy."
It seems that this would likely be left to those local boards to decide.
"One of the recommendations is to make sure there's a way to sort of securely store a student's phone during the day," Tallman said. "In a very small district, managing that may look very different than in a school where you've got hundreds, you know, maybe many hundreds of kids, you know, entering every day, trying to get to class, you know, managing that looks very different in terms of how you would do it, potentially what the cost would be."
The debate on devices in local school board meetings, if these recommendations are left to them, will likely be robust.