“School shooting rn...I’m scared...pls...I’m not joking,” began the brief but urgent text yesterday between a high school student and his mother as the tragic shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Ga., unfolded around him, killing two teachers and two students and wounding nine members of the school community.
The text thread, which went viral within hours of the tragic event, publicized the very primal and often private fears harbored by countless parents: that their children could be the next victim of a school shooting.
It also raised the question of whether these emotional texts could further fuel parental pushback to restrictive cellphone policies in K-12 schools, which in recent months have been ramping up in states and districts around the country. While many educators have advocated for cellphone restrictions, arguing that students are distracted and disengaged in class when they have access to their phones, some parents are fearful of being unable to contact their child during the school day.
School shootings are statistically rare events, but there’s been an increase in pace and scale in recent years. There have been 205 school shootings that resulted in injuries or deaths since 2018, according to Education Week’s tracker.
Education Week sought out multiple voices engaged in the ongoing and often polarizing debate about what cellphone policies in schools should look like. On every side of the debate, student safety topped the list of concerns.
Cellphone access seen as parents’ ‘emotional security blanket’
Being able to get in touch with their child if there’s an emergency at school is the No. 1 reason parents say they want their child to have access to their phone at school, according to a National Parents Union survey conducted in February of 1,500 parents of K-12 public school students.
“Parents continue to have anxiety as to whether or not their kids are safe and how difficult it is to actually get a hold of kids during an emergency,” said Keri Rodrigues, the president of the National Parents Union, in an interview.
School safety expert and parent Kenneth S. Trump (no relation to the former president) acknowledges this anxiety as a real and valid concern among parents—particularly in frightening moments of uncertainty, such as when there are reports of a shooter on campus. Having immediate cellphone access to their children, even when they’re in class, acts as an “emotional security blanket” for parents, said Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services.
“It gives them that direct contact to know that their kids are OK in a situation, and it bypasses all those other community formal communications that are set up from the school,” he said, referring to family outreach methods like mass texts and social media messaging.
Student access to cellphones can exacerbate a school crisis
But in the majority of school-based emergency situations, students’ access to cellphones can actually increase immediate risks, said Trump.
“If kids are on cellphones, they’re not paying full attention to the directions of adults,” he said. “They could be distracted from some life-saving action or instructions while they’re live-streaming, while they’re texting their parents, or while they’re on phone calls to say that they’re OK.”
Students’ tendency to call their parents during a crisis situation at school also expedites parents flocking to the school, Trump said, which in turn can impede school administrators’ ability to effectively manage the situation.
“That becomes a huge part of the emergency management plan,” he said.
However, there have been isolated incidents in which a student’s call to a first responder during a school emergency has resulted in those emergency personnel receiving information quickly, Trump said.
The polarizing perspectives related to student cellphone access make it a “wicked problem,” said Trump, referring to the type of challenge that’s considered nearly impossible to solve because of the incomplete and shifting requirements that often contradict each other.
Advocates of cellphone restrictions plan to stand their ground
Staunch advocates of restrictive student cellphone policies plan to stand firm, even in the wake of incidents such as Wednesday’s school shooting in Georgia.
At Dothan Preparatory Academy, a public 7-8 grade school in Dothan, Ala., students turn off their phones and place them in a lockbox in their homeroom at the beginning of the school day, according to assistant principal Charles Longshore. At the end of the school day, students go back to their homeroom to retrieve their phones.
When the policy was first announced last summer, Longshore said the social media comments were mostly negative. After answering parents’ questions during two informational meetings before the school year started, parents were more on board, Longshore said.
One of the major concerns parents had was, what happens during emergencies? Would students have access to their phones? School leaders assured parents that they have a policy in place to communicate with parents in cases of emergency, Longshore said.
“We don’t need 1,100 kids texting and calling people, and they’re up here getting in the way of first responders,” he said. “It’s going to cause more problems.”
Now in the second year of the school’s cellphone ban, Longshore said there hasn’t been any pushback from parents. But Longshore anticipates that, in light of the Apalachee shooting, more parents will want their kids to keep their phones on them.
“As a parent, I get it. I have sons in three different schools, and it is unnerving,” he said. “However, we hope and pray we never have any of those emergencies and are vigilant in our proactive nature to keep our campus safe. We believe the phone policy is creating a better, safer culture and climate and that hopefully plays a role in the mental well-being of all of our children.”
Other advocates say they, too, are staying firm on their stance against cellphones in schools.
“Yesterday is every parent’s worst nightmare, and our hearts go out to those families, but it does not change our stance,” said Kim Whitman, co-founder of the Phone-Free Schools Movement, a nonprofit advocacy group. “All three co-founders of the Phone-Free Schools Movement are moms, and we understand that desire to be in contact with children, especially in emergency situations. However, we also know that it’s best for children not to have access to phones in those situations, and we need to do what’s best for children.”
Why schools need to help parents find common ground on cellphone policies
A tragic incident such as a school shooting may not lead advocates on either side of the student cellphone policy debate to change their stance. But it could present an opportunity for open dialogue on both sides—something that most stakeholders in K-12 education seem to favor.
“While we can hear and totally understand the concerns of educators around distraction, around how cellphones may be interfering with classroom activities, and think that those are valid concerns and need to be addressed, we also need to acknowledge the deep concerns that parents and families have around why we think cellphones are important,” said Rodrigues, the president of the National Parents Union. “It needs to have equal weight and equal consideration in this conversation.”
Safety expert Trump suggests that, rather than simply handing down cellphone policies from the highest level at school districts, administrators consider leading conversations around cellphones and safety on a much smaller scale, such as in individual classrooms or school assemblies, talking directly with students and parents.
School leaders can find common ground with kids and parents if they explain the rationale behind why cellphones can be harmful during emergency situations, he said.
“A lot of parents will say, ‘I never thought about that. Oh, my God, I can be putting my kid in danger,’” he said, referring to common actions such as parents calling children during a school emergency or rushing to a school campus during an active shooting.
“And the kids don’t think about the fact that they might be attracting attention [from the perpetrator of a crime] if they’re calling their parents,” Trump continued. “They’re thinking, ‘I want to say I love you in case this is the last contact I have with my parents.’”
Explore our coverage around students’ use of cellphones in schools:
> Guide to setting a policy: Here’s a decisionmaking tool for educators to map out the different potential outcomes when putting cellphone policies in play.
> Cellphone bans and restrictions: See which states are requiring cellphone restrictions or bans in schools in our tracker. Explore our tracker.
> Nuisance or teaching tool? How teachers are turning an ubiquitous and growing class nuisance—the smartphone—into a tool for learning.
> Cellphone policies, explained: Education Week breaks down the different ways schools are addressing cellphone use, and the factors to weigh before adopting or changing the rules. Check out our explainer.
> Tips from teens & teachers: Teenagers offer 6 tips on how schools should manage students’ cellphone use, and educators share their tips on policing cellphone use in classrooms.
> Then & now: How the “sexting” panic previewed today’s debate about kids’ cellphone use.
