Device Policy

PHONES/PERSONAL DEVICE POLICY

PERSONAL DEVICES

Turn in your phone to your assigned pocket # by the time the bell rings. Please make sure all sounds/notifications, recordings capabilities, alarms, and other potentially disruptive phone functions are silenced or turned off. 

Mrs. Voight will let you know when you may retrieve your device. 

If you have a life-threatening condition or a unique situation--e.g. you use your phone to monitor your glucose levels--please communicate this with Mrs. Voight so she can communicate these needs with administration.

SMART WATCHES will be allowed UNLESS: 

If you’re using your watch like a phone, you’ll need to put your watch in the pocket like your phone.

On assessment days, students are required to place their smart watches in the class phone pockets

AIRPODS/HEADPHONES will not be allowed in class. Please get a set of earbuds for listening activities.

CONSEQUENCES: 

• First offense - verbal warning

• Second offense - teacher assigns a morning detention & communicates with parents

• Third offense - office referral 

• Fourth offense and beyond - progressive discipline as outlined in the RRHS Student Handbook

• Insubordination/direct refusal to put phone in pouch = office referral 

• “burner” phones = office referral

LAPTOPS/MACBOOKS/ETC.

On the district’s final forms, students and families agreed to the following:

• Personal devices must be used:

  • In silent mode on campus, school buses, and school vehicles.

  • Only for classroom curriculum purposes.

  • Only with teacher permission in the classroom.

• Students may not bypass, or attempt to bypass, the network filters that are applied to the Internet gateway connection.

You will be asked to use a classroom Chromebook for classroom assessments and other activities at the teacher’s discretion. Your teacher will let you know when you may use your own device for other classwork, but it must be connected to the RRCSD gateway.

WHY?

• You do not need your phone/personal device for class. Taking pictures of notes or assignment announcements is not as effective as handwriting them anyway.

• It's a distraction. Even if you don't look at it, you'll be wondering what's going on behind the screen. (Read The Wall Street Journal article below.)

• It's making you anxious. You know this is true.

• Unless you can provide immediate assistance in a life-threatening situation happening outside of school, you can wait to get messages from parents and other family members. Parents can always call the office and have a pass sent to class if they feel that a message cannot wait until the end of class. Your family knows you're in class. They want you to do well. They can wait.

• Research...see below.

• LOOK UP!

HOW SMARTPHONES HIJACK OUR MINDS - The Wall Street Journal

HAVE SMARTPHONES DESTROYED A GENERATION?- from The Atlantic

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis. A sample of the research finds: 

• Teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide, such as making a suicide plan.

• Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. 

• 12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often than eighth-graders did as recently as 2009.

• Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy

• Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say they’re unhappy than those who devote less time to social media. Admittedly, 10 hours a week is a lot. But those who spend six to nine hours a week on social media are still 47 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than those who use social media even less. The opposite is true of in-person interactions. Those who spend an above-average amount of time with their friends in person are 20 percent less likely to say they’re unhappy than those who hang out for a below-average amount of time.

• Forty-eight percent more girls said they often felt left out in 2015 than in 2010, compared with 27 percent more boys. Girls use social media more often, giving them additional opportunities to feel excluded and lonely when they see their friends or classmates getting together without them