Yondr and New Policies

By: Noah Shacket, Dashiell Sims, and Alan Wang

This year, a lot of changes have occurred in this school. For example, pack has been moved to between first and second period instead of before first period, binders for students not coming until October 7th, and for the first time ever, getting student OMNY cards, the MTA’s new way of getting into the system, instead of using student MetroCards like in previous years. Also, new policies have come to the school such as a new bathroom policy. The new bathroom policy prevents you from going to the bathroom in the first and last 10 minutes of the period, when before it was the first 10 minutes and the last 5 minutes of the period.

Along with these changes, this year the teachers have become more strict about checking pouches to make sure they are locked at the school entrance in the morning. Last year, students could unlock their Yondr pouch in afterschool, but this year students can’t. Students now have to wait until they leave afterschool to unlock it in room 314 if they go to afterschool. Because of this, there is a lot more of banging the pouches on every hard surface in the school to try to open them.  

Additionally, there's a policy that's enforced, where students' phones are confiscated and taken to the main office until a parent can pick them up if they are seen out of the pouch, making parents the ones who are punished here by forcing them to take a lot of time and effort out of their day to deal with something insignificant like picking up a child's phone. 

Why has this been happening? Students circumventing the pouches started in the spring of 2022, when all students at MS447 were first given a Yondr pouch to keep their phones in all day. The purpose of this was so that students wouldn’t get distracted by their phones during class. However, many students just ignored the policy, and didn’t lock the pouch so that they could just take their phone out, or just hid something phone-shaped in their pouch instead of their phones.

As a result, the teachers at the school entrance must check that students put their phones in and that their pouches are locked. However, this may be a good thing. 

A study on the effects of mobile phones on academic achievement and bullying concluded that, among other things, bullying fell by 12-18% in the schools surveyed, and students improved by 10 points on the PISA test, an international test that evaluates education systems. Up to this point,we have ignored one important group of people. What do parents think about this? 

To find out, the newspaper spoke with Nif Minnick, a parent of an eighth grader. ”I love the Yondr pouches,” she said. “I think that they're a wonderful invention to keep phones out of the classroom because many students don’t have the self-control to keep themselves off of it during class periods.” 

When asked about the new stricter policies, she stated “For more closely enforced phone policies I think they’re just actually trying to enforce the single rule that they set, which is no phones in school.” 

Her viewpoint doesn’t align with a lot of students, who like using their phones and think we should be able to use them in school. But maybe not all of them. 

What do students think of the new enforcement? 

Calla Wetstone, a student in 802, had this to say when asked if it improved the school “I think it’s okay. I think it helped everybody focus.” When asked why she felt this way, she said “I know a large number of people who would just be on their phones and miss 50% or more of the lessons.”

 In conclusion, some students are fuming about the new policies, but parents, teachers, and most students are accepting that it is a necessary evil to keep students from wandering off into the internet on their phones.